The Long Song

by Andrea Levy

  ‘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.

  So the missus agreed with her then overseer (the third I believe, the second having fallen insensible to the pox), that he should decree to all those slaves who were idle, indolent and not working well, that their houses would be the last to be restored if their performance did not improve. She approved that her slaves should for a period, until the plantation named Amity was in the pride of health again, work without the break of their ‘off time’. In her second year she permitted a new dungeon to be created near the burnt-out hospital for the correction of those negroes who proved to be incorrigibly feckless. ‘What harm could it do?’ she said of these arrangements.

  Then apprenticeship was finally forced upon our missus and all the planters of the Caribbean. Hopeful as the Hebrews leaving Egypt, the many slaves that toiled at Amity walked from their plantation to the town to listen to the white man, ‘de massa from a H’england’, as he explained to them, from the balcony of the courthouse, the details of the preparations for freedom.

  Though they were still bound to the missus to work for six years without pay, after hearing their Moses-in-beige-breeches declare slavery at an end, the slaves believed themselves to be actually free. They refused to work no more than the forty hours a week now required of them by King William and the law of England. No call to orderly conduct and ‘obedience to all persons in authority’ had any effect upon Caroline Mortimer’s negroes. And forty hours a week was just not enough time to take off a sugar crop. No inducement, nor overseer (certainly not the two drunken Welsh ruffians who managed the fields through that time), could get her negroes to task any longer.

  Yet Caroline Mortimer was required to care for those negr
oes in the same way—with lodging and food and clothing. The missus bemoaned that compensation from the government may soon start to tinkle within her pocketbook, yet still her crops would remain within the field. Sweet teeth in England just did not know the trouble she bore for them.

  Then upon one rainy, blustery morning, a sodden and bedraggled pack of some of the most forlorn, woebegone and wretched-looking negroes shuffled up in weary deputation on to the grounds of the great house. They had complaint about the dungeon, they called out, and had come to parley with the missus.

  Caroline would not permit this nasty group to enter further than the end of her garden. Barely managing to stand against the gusting wind, these feeble apprentices had to shout. And they called out a tale of such merciless torture and despicable conditions within that house of correction, that the missus was forced to conclude that it must be the whip of the wind rendering the tale fanciful to her ear.

  So with a look of pity, but a roll of her eye she sweetly said, ‘What nonsense.’

  Come, see for yourself, was begged—not once, not twice, but over and over as the missus shook her head, waved them away and asserted that she had not the time.

  With desperation, one of the scrawniest and ill-fed of this troupe (James Richards, a carpenter), summoned breath enough to blast, ‘Massa would have come if him been livin’.’

  And Caroline’s attention was summarily seized. She mounted her horse that very afternoon.

  The overseer, Henry Reed, could not be found, so it was his callow, pungently perspiring bookkeeper who reluctantly obeyed the command to lead the missus down into the dungeon.

  The narrow passage and two arched cells of this prison were perfectly dark when the missus entered. The stench—like a dead rat decaying—was thick as gruel, yet still she believed those tiny stone-built chambers to be empty. But like bats first sensed within a cave, she began to detect the black walls moving as her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. The wriggling of the murk, however, was not caused by flying rodents, but by the many negro inmates of these cells writhing upon their chains. Sensing visitors, they began to move with more urgency. The scraping of metal, the clatter of shackles, the complaint of hoarse voices, all assailed her with one dissonance, as both languid and frantic eyes fought to find her within the black gloom. A man (Richard Young from the first gang) was pinned to the wall by his upheld arms. A naked woman (Catherine Wiggan, also from the first gang) was chained to the floor by her neck. A child (Catherine’s youngest daughter, Liddy, I believe) was encased within a stock by her ankles. And more this way. And yet more that. The dungeon was crowded.

  The missus fled.

  Arriving back at the great house, Caroline Mortimer directly took to her bed before plunging herself into the solace of a bottle of her sweetest Madeira. July found her missus vomiting upon her bed sheets and slurring the command that a trunk be packed for her as she was intending to take the next ship back to England. ‘I had no idea of it, I had no idea . . . I believed a prison cell with water and bread and rough furnishings . . . I am a Christian woman . . . Believe me, when I say I had no idea of it.’

  How the missus did not know the pitiless conditions within that dungeon at Amity, July just could not comprehend. For every negro upon that plantation, even those within the kitchen, feared its viciousness. Come, negro children had even devised a rhyme for it, which they recited during the playing of passing stones:

  Me mama beg de bakkra na t’row mi in de dungeon,

  Me sista beg de bakkra na t’row her in de dungeon,

  De missus tell de bakkra go t’row dem in di dungeon.

  So down de dread dungeon dem did go.

  As her missus whimpered her useless innocence July, with a shrug of her shoulder said, ‘Then close up the dungeon, missus.’ When Caroline lifted her head to gaze upon July, her expression was quizzical as a guileless child. Her missus’s tipsy eyes were rimmed with deep red, her cheeks were of the dullest grey pallor, her lips were crusted with drying vomit, and her hair was as awry as a fallen cockatoo’s. A brief beat of pity pulsed within July for this forlorn white woman—her fat-batty missus—but then was gone.

  ‘Tell overseer-man,’ July began again, with cautious authority, ‘tell that man him must close up that dungeon and use it no more.’

  And that is exactly what Caroline did. ‘Close it up. Close it up,’ she commanded the overseer, ‘and hope the magistrate never heard tell of it.’ She made Henry Reed not only empty its chambers of all the captives but also, at July’s suggestion, fire the dungeon to smoke out its callousness. Henry Reed may soon have left her employ bewailing that he now had no inducement that could extract more effort from the idle, the indolent, and the not working well, but that dread dungeon was no more.

  And so puffed did our missus become after that splendid resolution that she proclaimed that, from that day onward, her house-maid July (or Marguerite as she still insisted upon calling her), should serve her also in the administering of the plantation. For when her brother was alive, was it not July who stood at Caroline Mortimer’s side to sift the skulkers from the sick upon Monday mornings? ‘No. Him jus’ have sore head from too much rum,’ July would tell her or, ‘That black tongue not be sickness, it can be wipe off,’ or, ‘Caution, missus—yaws!’ If July could assist her then, when she was no more than a child, what better help could she be now? There was the register of slaves to be taken, compensation to be claimed, always overseers and bookkeepers to be found . . .

  ‘Me can’t, missus,’ July told her.

  ‘Nonsense. I say you will, then you will,’ the missus twittered. ‘We will bring the negroes in a line and they will tell their name and you will put it in the ledger. I will need it for inspection for the compensation.’

  ‘But me can’t, missus,’ July repeated, ‘Me can neither read, nor write.’

  Her missus was nearly felled by the force of that sudden understanding.

  ‘Oh, Marguerite,’ she said with exasperation, ‘why ever not!?’

  Name, sex, age. These were the earliest words that July could draw—although her tongue poked from her lips to follow every stroke. When, with faltering breath, she at first enjoined the sounds of the letters into the word, her missus jumped upon her feet and clapped, ‘Yes, yes, oh yes, Marguerite.’

  Caroline Mortimer proved a very able teacher—come, she had a blackboard, chalk and pointer brought from town. She took July’s hand within her own to trace out all the letters of the alphabet. She wrote simple words upon the board, commanding July to make her own, rather clumsy, copies. She even read loudly and deliberate from books while moving July’s finger along the words, before demanding her pupil, ‘Repeat . . . repeat . . . repeat.’

  But long after the missus had tired of these lessons—the dusty blackboard taken away to be used as table top within the kitchen—July was still eager to continue that learning. There were many papers and books that lay about the great house—papers covered with a grey print of letters dense as stains—that July commenced, out of cussedness, to study, one slow word at a time, until their jumble danced with meaning. Head, tradesman, inferior, field, domestic—soon July began to read those words fast as conversing, and to write them without the aid of her tongue.

  July was now a young woman, tall but not with the colossal bearing of her mama, Kitty. Her hair was no longer that picky-picky-head tangle of her youth but braided neat and always wrapped within a clean, coloured kerchief. Her full mouth still had that mischievous turn upon its corners, where a wry tale or tall-tall truth looked about to escape it. But within her spirited black eyes a keen observer might sense the anguish that stalked her. For her dreams were so tyrannical, so pestering with tormenting episodes, that July contrived to rest no more than four hours within any night. In unguarded moments, a droop within her eyelids, a sag at her jaw, could dull her features to morose, swift as a doll with two faces.

  But so important was July to Caroline, that her missus had received thirty-one pounds in compens
ation for the loss of July as her property. Florence and Lucy were worth much less—nineteen pounds and ten shillings—being inferior slaves that could only wash, launder and thump the missus’s dresses to rags. Byron—now the fervent young groom at Amity—raised only thirteen pounds and four shillings for his gangly frame.

  July had been pleased with her price. Thirty-one pounds! She used to boast of it. Then, one day, whilst perusing some papers, she discovered that the missus had also received thirty-one pounds in compensation for the useless, one-eyed Molly as well.

  Now, July was a servant who did read and write—better than many white people upon the island; she did have wit enough to negotiate the best prices from even the most craven of negro traders, and consequently kept the stores full upon a meagre purse; she quelled house servants’ quarrels, and kept house boys tasking; she rode a horse at her missus’s side and could steer her in a gig; she brushed her missus’s hair and laced her missus’s clothes; and at her missus’s bidding she would visit the boiling house—her feet being chalked upon entering that Hades—to examine the liquor within the teaches and convey her missus’s commands to the head man. And so much more—too much to list with my miserable supply of paper.

  And Molly, reader? What did she do? Well, Molly was now the cook. She could kill you with her custard and make you sigh with wistful longing for the deceased cook, Hannah, with every mouthful of her disgusting fare. Thirty-one pounds for Molly! Cha! But there is slavery’s spite, reader. That pitiless document left our July so downhearted that in that moment she wished she had never learned to read; so shocking was it to know that high-high, bewhiskered white men in England believed her and Molly to be of the same value.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. When the clock finally chimed the midnight hour upon that night that slavery ceased, July counted along with soft breath the one, two, three, four . . . until that last, fateful chime of twelve shuddered, sonorous, through the room.