The Long Song

by Andrea Levy

  So when, with a quivering lip, the missus replied, ‘You may bring your baby with you, Marguerite,’ it was July, once more compelled to yield to this woman’s wishes, who did then pale grey within that moonlight.

  Entering in upon the drawing room, July at once understood why her missus was driven to breach her own deceptions to seek out some companionship. Cries, yelling, shouts, banging, and screams were escaping the negro village in a furious squall that jolted through the thin glass of her window. That commotion did haunt the room. The sideboard bounced and rattled within it, the candle flames spluttered, and the daybed, where the missus bid July to lay down her baby, appeared to wobble. Having settled upon the seat before the window, July was forced to heed her missus as she pranced about the room ceaselessly chattering.

  ‘The negroes have driven him to this action—I mean, what choice was left to him? . . . No one does more for the negroes’ welfare than he. He cares too much . . .’

  All at once, July’s awareness was snatched from her missus’s fretting when a murky pink glow framed the horizon, as if the sun were about to rise upon it. So pungent did the smell of burning become that it irritated July’s nostrils, while a gloom of smoke misted the room.

  ‘But niggers cannot be reasoned with. If those abolitionists in England had ever actually lived amongst negroes then they would have known it was folly to free them . . .’

  A black stain of startled birds flew from the tree tops when a clear strike of repeated rifle shot caught in the air. Was it the birds that squealed so as they rounded in the sky?

  ‘His father is quite wrong. Negroes will never be civilised, nor will they ever do as they are bid.’

  Flames, clear as the candle beside July, glimmered in the distance.

  ‘But now it is too late. They have been made free. Free not to work. Why, those niggers will not rest until every planter is in the workhouse . . .’

  And the missus’s pacing began vibrating under July’s feet like the low rumbling of galloping horses.

  The negroes were running down the lanes now, July knew it. For in her mind’s eye she was once more amongst them. All was crazed motion. Into the fields, into the trees. Seizing belongings, kicking chickens, struggling with goats. Standing flailing sticks and machetes. Cussing curses upon the white men who would dare to enter their homes. Screaming to find lost pickney. Where you be? Where you be? Confusion, smoke, fire. Run, July, run. Pull that white man from his horse and stamp upon his hand. And that one, quick, fright him with that fire stick. Mash him. Bash him. But then run. Run!

  Suddenly, without warning, July had to slap her hand across her mouth to catch the vomit that began to spew from her.

  ‘Marguerite, where are you going?’ her missus yelled as July fled from that room.

  July’s sick splattered over the veranda. She retched. Her throat was scoured hoarse by it. And she retched. Her stomach ached with it.

  But the terror of the din that rose from the negro village was now louder with no glass to curb it. It hurled July back inside. She wiped snot from her nose, tears from her eyes, and breathed as deeply as her foreboding would allow.

  When she re-entered the drawing room she found her missus stooping low over Emily—tenderly tickling her baby’s throat as she lay upon the daybed. Her missus’s face, at first rigid with frown, soon pursed about the mouth. And she whispered upon her child, ‘What a little one you are.’ Staring fixedly at the baby, the missus widened her eyes, then slowly opened and shut her lips. Then she smiled and patted her hands together in a soft clap. As she offered her little finger into the baby’s mouth she sensed July staring upon her. Without turning to July, nor taking her gaze from the baby, the missus said, ‘She looks just like him. She’s so fair. Not like a nigger’s child at all.’ Then, looking up to find July’s eyes upon her, she added, ‘But she is adorable,’ before returning to her cooing. ‘What did you say she was called?’ the missus then asked.

  July bounded that room in a leap to wrest her child from out of her missus’s affections. ‘Marguerite, I was doing no harm,’ her missus said as July snatched her baby from the daybed. But the sound of a heavy footfall stomping briskly up the veranda steps had both July and her missus turning, startled, towards the door.

  Robert Goodwin rushed in upon the room.

  His hat was off his head. His hair wet. His face blackened with soot and striped by slides of dripping sweat that ran down. His shirt hanging out his breeches—dirty as rag—had a slash of blood at the collar. His brown jacket was ripped—at the sleeve, at the shoulder. His boots were enclosed in putrid mud. A ragamuffin, not an English gentleman. Yet he bestowed an air of wholehearted jubilation as he said, ‘It has been a great success!’

  Who he was addressing, July could not tell, for he looked at neither she, nor the missus, as they both gaped upon him.

  ‘The negroes finally understand where their duty lies. And it is to their masters and to God.’

  He hesitated, as he stepped further into the room, on where he should rest his gaze. ‘I have returned them to their rightful work,’ he addressed first to the missus, who glowed quite crimson before him. ‘The negroes are to commence taking off four of the cane pieces at conch blow tomorrow morning, they have assured me of that,’ he continued to July. ‘All is well,’ he laughed before lifting his head heavenward to declare, ‘If my father were here, I believe he would shake my hand upon this day. Yes. Yes. I believe my father would be very proud of his son.’

  But then Robert Goodwin clasped at his arm—the one where the jacket sleeve was ripped—and staggered as he took a further step. The missus squealed like a poked pig—as if it were she that felt some pain—and pitched her fat white batty across the room to steady him. July had never seen it move so fast, nor wobble so wide.

  ‘Oh, Robert, Robert,’ the white-woman twittered, ‘What is it? Robert, Robert,’ as if he could not recall his own name.

  As he placed his arm about the missus’s shoulder, the feeble woman nearly folded to the floor. For nothing heavier than Nottingham lace had ever bore hard upon that limp neck before. Come—she teetered graceless as a bakkra drunk on rum under his burden. Yet as the missus bumped and jolted him to a seat she boldly impudenced July by commanding her to, ‘Get some water quickly, Marguerite.’

  Cha. July was not there to serve her. July had been required only to sit with her. For was it not July who nursed the pickney of the master of this house? Was it not July who wore his gold cross and chain about her neck? Was it not July who, curled tight within Robert Goodwin’s heart, unfurled only at his will?

  July lingered, waiting for Robert Goodwin to throw off the missus’s succour and reach out his hand to her. July dallied, expecting soon that he would request she help him out of his boots. He would wish to gaze upon his child soon—to caress a gentle finger across her cheek or coo-coo upon her sweetness. So July waited for him to grumble, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Caroline, leave me alone,’ so July might send a sneer across the room to spitefully slap her missus’s face. But when Robert Goodwin, with so little care, snapped upon her, ‘You heard your mistress, Marguerite. Bring some water,’ it was July who was abruptly struck.

  The next morning, July did not find her Mr Big-big blue-eye, her Mr Sweet-sweet Massa, sleeping close against her in their bed, his renk morning breath warming her ear, his rogue knee pressing at the small of her back. No. July found Robert Goodwin sleeping within his hammock upon the veranda.

  And where once, when she watched him, he lay sprawled and tranquil in sleep like a newborn, now he twitched. His lips, caught in a silent discourse, chattered together. His eyes, trapped beneath darkened lids, fluttered restlessly. His arms, embracing a pistol, gripped it tight. As she drew near upon him, he suddenly awakened with the jolt of a fearful quarry.

  ‘Did you hear the conch blow?’ was what he asked her.

  And July, at once aware that indeed this bright blue morning was more tranquil than any she had ever known, replied, ‘No.’
r />   CHAPTER 31

  OH HOW THE FLOOR did quake as the missus bustled through the long room at a galloping pace. ‘Marguerite!’ July was nearly flattened to the ground so fast did the missus fly at her. ‘Marguerite, we must send Byron quickly,’ was all she managed to utter before her panting breath choked her. July rolled her eyes waiting for this convulsion to pass. When, finally, the missus had breath enough to continue she said, ‘We must send Byron or Elias to the cane piece at Virgo.’

  When July sucked quietly upon her teeth—that such fuss-fuss could be made from so little a request—the missus fixed her pale eyes close upon her to say, ‘No, you don’t understand. I have just been told by an odious little man who rode out to the fields with Robert this morning, that he has begun acting strangely. When I asked him if Robert was unwell, the man just said, “Well, you could say that.” Then he picked his teeth with a stick right before me. When I enquired why my husband did not return with him, he said that Robert refused to be moved from the cane piece. But whatever could he mean, Marguerite?’

  July rushed to the stables to command Byron to harness up the pony and cart. She would go to the cane piece herself. She would send no foolish house boy who would think only to shine the massa’s shoes if he found him wretched or bleeding. If Robert Goodwin was struck down with a fever from the sun then he would wish only her to gather him up to nurse and cool his brow. If he was broken then no one else must raise his fractured bones, for only she could perform that ministration with enough tenderness. If he was bitten by a snake then who else but she could suck out that sting?

  But the missus ran to follow after July screeching, ‘I must come too.’ July was unable to stop that fool-fool woman from gathering up her fancy skirts, tying on her bonnet, and fussing with her parasol before struggling her batty into the cart.

  July was careful to ride carelessly over the stony paths so the missus would be bounced about that cart like a leather ball. ‘Must we go so fast?’ the missus kept pleading with July as they travelled. Only as they approached by the negro village did July rein in the pony to slow.

  July recalled that, at that point in the lane, she should have been looking upon Miss Peggy’s dwelling place. But that boarded hut with the string of calabash hung over the door was no longer there. In its place only the crooked arch of a door frame was left standing, while a pig lay dead under a pall of black flies before a disordered heap of splintered wood. Further down that lane, Miss Fanny’s hut—where July had chased out after Robert Goodwin, not so very long ago—still possessed its stone walls, but had no thatch upon the roof. Outside its open door, a broken-down chair lay upturned beside a dutchy pot that was crushed almost flat.

  As the cart moved along, July saw that all was devastation within the village. The blackened ground was strewn with a debris of tables, stools, mattresses, cooking pots, fragments of cups and plates, branches of trees, smashed and rotting fruit. Wisps of smoke rose here and there, releasing a woeful stench of scorching. While many of the huts that were still where July knew them to have always been, now stood forlornly crippled by missing walls, windows, roofs. And apart from a brown dog—whimpering and lame, dragging its useless bloody back legs along behind it, and some chickens pecking heedless about, there was no one to be found there.

  Where were the women cooking outside their homes or steadfast pounding at their grain within a pestle? Come, where were the pickney chasing their goats? The men? Why were no tired-eyed men sitting smoking their pipes in the shade? Always eager faces came to stare when the massa’s cart rode by. Where were they, those busybodies keen to get some chat-chat of what the missus be wearing today? As July and her missus rode on to pass through the peculiar silence of a deserted mill works, her missus’s face began to shrivel with frown. For the missus finally deemed something amiss enough to ask, ‘But . . . But . . . But where are all the negroes?’

  When the cart reached the edge of the cane piece the missus, suddenly sitting up straight, remarked, ‘But look, Marguerite, there is a negro. Go and enquire of the whereabouts of his master.’ July rode the cart in closer.

  He looked like a negro, this figure standing small before a louring barbed wall of yellow-parched cane. Ragged, filthy, black. He was stripped to the waist and clasped a machete, holding it high above his shoulder. But only when he struck it down and slashed the cane in the middle of the pole did July realise she was staring not upon a negro—who would have felled that cane skilfully at the base and be casting it away by now—but upon the frame of Robert Goodwin.

  Grunting loud, he began slashing the cane from side to side like he were scything guinea-grass, cursing with the effort of every swipe. July jumped from the cart, ignoring her missus’s plea for assistance. And she caught Robert’s arm as he raised it once more to cut pitiable at the cane. He twisted to look upon her. Snorting fierce as an overworked beast, his mouth gaped as he gasped for breath. His eyes, at first wild with anguish, soon filled with spite. Until he stared such hate upon July that she shrank from him.

  ‘What you be doing?’ July asked, with a voice more tremulous than she had ever believed herself to be.

  He snatched himself from out her grasp. ‘Do not touch me. Get away from me,’ he said. Then he seemed to soften before her. He sighed and wiped his arm across his forehead while quietly saying, ‘The negroes are all gone.’ His blue eyes were red. ‘All of them have taken their belongings and gone. There is not one left upon Amity. Not one. There is no one left to take off the cane. Nor to turn the mill. No one is at the coppers in the boiling house. No one filling hogsheads, nor delivering to the dock. They have all deserted me. So . . . So . . . I have decided that I will bring in the cane myself.’

  ‘Come, you cannot cut cane!’ July said.

  But he shouted loud over her, ‘I’ve no need of niggers, I will do everything myself.’ He turned to slash at the poles of cane once more—feeble as a small boy at play with a stick. The disturbed barbs upon the leaves flew to sting in July’s eyes. She seized his arm again, but he shouted, ‘Get away from me, nigger, get away.’

  She would not let him go. She struggled to hold him—grasping tight at his arm while he twisted and turned in an effort to shake her away. She would not leave him. But then he caught her throat so tight within his hand that her tongue protruded under the grasp. July wrestled to free herself from his hold as he raised his machete high above her. And, all at once, July heard herself crying, ‘Mercy, massa, mercy,’ as she cringed away from him.

  It was the missus seizing the machete from out of his hand that spared July from that fearsome blow. ‘Robert, what are you doing?’ the missus yelled.

  His arm was still poised to strike, his eyes still vicious, when Robert Goodwin heartlessly threw July away. He glared upon the missus—perusing her—from the top of her blond head to the tip of her slippered toes. Until his gaze rested calm upon the captured machete that she held clasped to her. Soon he dropped to kneel upon the trash, first one knee, then two. Then he bowed his head, held his face within his palms, and wept.

  CHAPTER 32

  COME, LET US FIRST find the field negroes who once resided and worked upon the plantation named Amity. We must ride a good way to follow the path they journeyed when they abandoned that place. The trail they travelled—carrying their salvaged mattresses, chairs, clay pots, tin pans—has been worn down over many years by hundreds of bare black feet just like their own. It was walked by negroes who wished to be undisturbed by white men. It was run down by excited slaves chasing wild boar. It was fled down by runaways and hid along by the needful.

  But the negroes of Amity escaped by it with flapping chickens hung over their shoulders; with bleating goats tethered together in a line; with the pickney shoved along; and the old, leaning upon sticks or thrown together atop the lumbering carts whose wheels creaked and stuck in the mud; with obstinate donkeys who were coaxed with whips to slip-slow under the load they carried; and vexed cattle struggling under their yokes.

  The path t
hey took twists and turns through a thick fern wood, where a dark canopy of furry fronds blocks most the light. But then it rises out of this soft dank dell to become steep and covered with bamboo and logwood. Those are cotton trees that now line our route—bare of their own leaves, but with their spreading branches draped lush with wild fig and creeping plants.

  As the land begins to level out, stones appear, and the way is hindered by boulders pushing their jagged way up through the earth. On past those fallen trees and that scraggly sprawl of yellowing banana plants, and there we find our first glimpse of the clearing where our negroes came to rest—the ramshackle camp that was raised upon these backlands just outside the tumbling borders of Amity.

  Peggy and Cornet took one look at this woebegone place, packed up their cart, said their farewells, and rode off to Westmoreland. Benjamin left to join his minister-man to work his own piece of land in a place called Sligoville. Samuel could not stay, for he needed the river to be deeper for his shrimp pots and the tributary that trickled through this place could be crossed in a stride. Tilly wept and begged for them to return to the plantation until Miss Nancy slapped her. While Mary Ellis stood silently, looking about, doubting that there was enough land to feed them all.

  But Giles spread his arms wide to show the glory of this place with no white men to haunt them. He showed them the sprawl of the overgrown flatlands just beyond the wood. Come, trees over there already abundant with fruit. Soon those lands would be cleared and planted with plantain, cocoas, yam and corn. And they had goats, chickens, plenty-plenty boar, and did not Ezra manage to steal five of the massa’s cows?

  James Richards held the plan for the felling of trees, the cutting of wood, the making of huts. While the clearing of the land, where even the old and pickney had a part to play, was driven by Elizabeth Millar, soon known, when she was too far to hear, as the black bakkra.