by S. I. Martin
‘I suppose you’d like to hear some,’ he said without inflection. Somewhere, in the direction of St Martin’s Lane, an explosion tore through the night. Window-panes, cutlery and glassware rattled.
‘A recitation!’ Equiano guffawed. ‘I’ faith no, sir. We are all writers here. We must read for ourselves. Pass us the screed that we may examine it.’
‘The screed?’
Equiano gestured disdainfully at Buckram’s waistcoat. A single, folded copy of Henry Prince’s tract poked out from the hem like a whore’s finger beckoning through a curtain.
Buckram gasped. Equiano snapped his fingers impatiently and stretched out his hand.
Still holding the wine bottle, Buckram stood up and moved to the door. ‘Charlotte, gentlemen, I fear I must disappoint you. The material I carry is unsuitable for general readership. It is of a highly personal nature, therefore …’
‘Personal!’ roared Equiano. ‘Personal!’
‘Ola, please,’ cooed Charlotte, ‘the neighbours!’
‘I’ll show you what “personal” is!’
In one motion, he leaped up, leaned forward and whipped the pamphlet from Buckram’s waistcoat.
Buckram took a step forward to retrieve it, but Thomas and Ottobah were already on their feet and coming to stand beside their friend.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Charlotte shakily, ‘I beg you retake your seats. There is no need …’
Equiano carefully unfolded the pamphlet, holding it some distance from himself. ‘Aethiopian Secret Papers!’ he sneered. ‘I thought as much. You’re nothing but a Piazza pimp, preying on the weakest daughters of Afric’.’
Buckram turned the handle and put one foot over the threshold. ‘Miss Tell, gentlemen, if you’ll allow me to explain …’
Charlotte came to his side, but it was only to open the door wider. ‘I think you should leave now,’ she said.
He nodded, looking at the three men’s grim expressions. Equiano tore the Aethiopian Secret Papers into strips and scraps, and as Buckram plodded down the stairs, handfuls of it fell about his ears like fat confetti.
London, 28 June 1786
If only Buckram had a home to call his own … if only he could read and write … if only he had clean clothes … if only there was somewhere, anywhere, he could go without money … if only he’d not been born a slave … he could be smoking a pipe on the porch of some farmhouse out in Nova Scotia watching his crops blossoming under the vast Canadian skies.
As it was, Buckram was sitting hunched over a cracked and grimy spittoon in the gloom of Neville’s shed. His stomach bubbled and rasped from three days without food and his tongue could still discern strands of raw carrot wedged between his teeth from his last meal three days before. He felt his bowels shiver as once again he buckled forward to spew out a thin stream of bitter-sweet bile. Exhausted, angry and sad, he wished he could summon the power to leave his bed of soiled straw and walk even the short distance to Rose Street to visit William. He slumped back onto the thinning hay, cursing himself, lacking even the strength for self-abuse.
He focused on his immediate agonies, his past losses and his failures to come: anything to keep his mind from replaying those shameful scenes in Charlotte’s apartment.
How could he have been such a fool? He was just another mad sadblack like all the rest, wasting away in grotty, sunless corners across the city, waiting to die. Maybe the army was the answer, or even a life at sea; at least he’d have regular meals, a place to sleep, and perhaps a chance to save a few pounds. But he knew that would never do. He couldn’t live under orders from white men any more, he’d fought too hard and killed too many of them to return to such a life with an unclouded heart. Better to live under his own volition, even if that meant only another few days of hunger and madness.
Buckram lifted his head and scanned the darkness. There, against the wall, stood the old sword-pistol that he’d taken from the corpse of a fallen Tory at Blackstock’s Plantation. William had taken good care of it, the scabbard was inlaid with tooled leather and mother-of-pearl, the blade itself was still sharp and well oiled. A handful of balls and caps were lying about somewhere. If it came to the worst he could always get a good price for it. He propped himself up against the wall and started to rock slowly as he lamented the possible loss of his only weapon and the fact that his comrades had abandoned him. He rested his head on his knees and let time pass him by.
‘Hello?’
Buckram jerked up from his morbid reflections.
‘Hello? Mr Franklin?’
It was Charlotte.
Buckram saw the hem of her dress sweeping the ground in the inch or two of light beneath the doorframe.
He held his breath, praying for her to go away, hoping that she wouldn’t knock on the unlocked door and tap it open.
‘Buckram, it’s me, Charlotte.’ She tapped and the door swung open. She squinted, wrinkled her nostrils and walked in.
‘So, you’ve tracked me to my lair,’ croaked Buckram. ‘Make yourself at home.’
She remained standing, staring at him with huge, watery eyes and cradling a wicker basket too tightly.
‘How are you?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
‘As you see me,’ said Buckram.
‘I thought something like this had happened, so I took the liberty of coming here unannounced. I’ve brought you some food. Here.’ She placed the basket on the floor.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Indeed not, sir. You do starve. Do you have a plate?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I thought as much.’ She unfolded a green-and-white checked cloth and spread it over the cleanest area. From the basket she produced two pears, a quartern loaf, six slices of ham, a chunk of Cheddar and a small, stoppered bottle of Bedford ale. As she put each item on the cloth she looked up at him, smiling broadly like a smug conjuror. She took a penknife from her indispensable and sliced and fanned a pear, the cheese and the bread, then stacked them, together with the ham, into a triple-decked sandwich.
‘Ma’am, you’re too kind.’ He ate slowly and with great care, suppressing the urge to bolt down the food – several dozen bouts of near starvation had taught him that.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ he said.
‘But I had to. I had to see how you were.’
‘Even after the way I disgraced myself under your roof?’
She just sat there, perched on the edge of the cloth, looking at him, stunned and tender, as if he was a talking cat.
A clatter of wheels and hooves rang out in the courtyard. Buckram dropped his sandwich and stood up, shaking with alarm.
‘Neville,’ he breathed. ‘Neville’s back! He can’t find you here. You’ll have to go.’ He held a finger to his lips and looked into the courtyard through a tiny knot hole in the wall.
Pastor Neville was helping Reverend Smyth down from a trap and setting a bundle of bags and books onto the grass verge.
Buckram sighed and shook his head – clearly, there’d be no end to his humiliations today. He watched Neville accompany the vicar into the church.
‘Now,’ he said to Charlotte. ‘Hurry, collect your things and go from here. This is his house.’
‘House? This?’
‘Hurry, woman!’
Charlotte scooped the food up in the cloth and began cramming it any old way into the basket. Buckram bent to help her, stuffing the last of the sandwich in his mouth and hiding the bottle of ale. He had one hand on the latch and the other at Charlotte’s elbow when footsteps sounded in the courtyard again. Neville, carrying his canvas satchel and family-sized Bible, was approaching the shed.
Buckram saw the preacher stop, turn and start as a familiar voice hailed him from the street.
‘Stay where you are. You cannot enter here,’ Neville commanded. Even in the thick of battle, Buckram had never seen such a look on Neville’s face. He was scared grim and held his Bible out before him like a fat, oxblood talisman.
�
�You may not pass.’ His voice quaked. ‘This is sacred ground.’
There was a soft, rich chuckle and Georgie George flung a leg over the wall and walked into sight. The sun was at its highest point and waves of heat pulsated from the grass, yet he was still wearing his frock coat.
‘Pastor, everywhere is sacred ground, yet, behold, I travel free. God alone knows where you get your ideas from.’
‘God! What do you know of God?’
‘Wrong question, Pastor. You should ask: what does God know of me?’
‘I am not afraid of you.’
‘Then that is good. It makes everything so much easier.’
‘State your business, then leave this place.’
Georgie ahemmed insolently and folded his hands behind his back.
‘I come with a message for friend Buckram.’
‘He’ll no longer go a-pimping, if that’s what you seek.’
Georgie tut-tutted loudly and beamed. ‘No, Neville, I come with an offer of honest work.’ Georgie turned to face the shed and looked squarely through the knot hole directly into Buckram’s eye. Buckram cowered in horror. Georgie could see him behind the wooden wall as if it was a pane of glass. Feeling stupid he straightened himself and returned Georgie’s gaze.
‘Tell him that he is expected at Peacock’s the Printers in Drury Lane. There he will collect a number of posters to be put about the walls of the city. You see, Neville, the black townsfolk are organizing a rout next month at the Bull Inn. All are invited. Please feel welcome.’
Neville grunted.
‘Tell friend Buckram that he will be paid three shillings a day for four days’ labour.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Neville.
‘All for now,’ said Georgie. ‘But you and I, preacher, have another appointment, I fear, some time in the near future. Good day to you.’ He cackled and turned to walk away.
‘I’m not afraid of you, imposter,’ bellowed Neville. ‘I know who you are. I know who you are.’
Buckram heard Georgie shout back, ‘Everybody knows me, fool. Everybody knows me.’
Neville scuttled back into the church, crossing himself furiously.
‘Who was that?’ asked Charlotte. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’
‘Never mind. You must leave before Neville comes back. Go now.’ He unlatched the door and shoved her out. ‘This way, round the back.’
They slipped into the alley beside the stables. Buckram helped her brush straw and mites from her skirts. His hands patted about her lower body and came to rest on her hips. He pulled her to him gently. She rested her head against his chest as he stroked her back.
She moved to kiss him, but his breath was foul, so she touched both his cheeks with her lips.
‘I know you for who you are,’ she said. ‘You’re a Blackbird, a free spirit.’
‘I’m really not,’ Buckram railed, cloaking his growing frown with a mellow smirk.
‘And you love your people,’ she added.
‘And you friends, Ottobah and Ola. They do not?’
Charlotte sighed wearily. ‘Their concern for our people weighs on them as a daytime duty, but by night they choose to consort with white women. You’d never do that, would you?’
‘Me? Never.’ Buckram felt his heart thrown, like a skipping stone, across the waters of untruth, onto the bright shores of redemption.
‘You needn’t stay here if you don’t want to,’ she told him. ‘I’ve room aplenty where I live. You would be most welcome.’
‘Charlotte, don’t pity me, I beg you.’
‘I only want you to be alright,’ she managed to say.
He muttered: ‘Thank you, thank you. Thank you.’
They stood swaying together, head to head, in the cool, rat-filled alley. Charlotte looked up at him and giggled, k-k-k, and Buckram felt happy that he was loved at last and sad for knowing why.
London, 25 July 1786
Once – it seemed like a lifetime ago – William had asked Georgie where he lived.
‘Oh, nowhere. And everywhere,’ Georgie had replied.
In the past weeks William had come to discover some of the truth behind that answer.
Georgie had no permanent address; most nights he’d be off to a different location to stay with yet another of his ever-growing circle of friends, lovers and acquaintances. Some nights, he’d spend going from ken to ken, from skittle alley to brothel, carousing till dawn and studying evil with diverse criminals. Otherwise, he could be found just walking about the city, talking to the mendicants and homeless people who’d elected him their king.
With Georgie problems never boiled down to money. He seemed to know everybody and money simply didn’t matter when you had his kind of credit. Many a time William saw him leave for an evening’s debauchery without a farthing.
Too much had happened to William in too short a time. His life as a dandy had vanished in the ruins of the Coopers’ Arms. William the gentleman gambler was now William the scrounger: back in Brydges Street. It mortified him to acknowledge that if it hadn’t been for Georgie’s good name he, William Supple (‘the Negro Tragedian’), would almost certainly be homeless, hungry or dead, and that George took no pains to disguise the curious, frustrated satisfaction he enjoyed in his playing a father-figure to him.
William’s name had been added to Georgie’s account at several establishments, including the Piazza Coffee-house, Tom’s Coffee-house (which he avoided, not wanting to meet any old dicing acquaintances), the Coach and Horses in Charles Street, the Pineapple in New Road, the Turkish baths on the Piazza and the laundress’s on Tavistock Street who provided unlimited supplies of fresh linen.
He took his meals at the Charioteer, signing for them on Georgie’s slate. Under a similar arrangement, he slept there too, above the bar in a cramped, airless space. And, of course, it was Georgie who was granting him free entry to this evening’s hop at the Bull Inn.
It was only a matter of time, he knew, before Georgie would be calling the favours back in. William hoped he’d be back on his feet again and away from places like Drury Lane and St Giles before his friend started relying on him as a look-out here or a courier there. Buckram was the man to advise him now, but he’d seen nothing of him since he’d made a couple with Charlotte Tell.
Not long after losing his home, William had visited Neville’s shed in search of Buckram. Buckram was long gone, Neville told him; the Devil had taken him to live with a woman. The preacher’s eyes had been wild and weary, and William remembered the steady, sinking sense of loss he felt as he listened to him rave. Neville had crossed the final step between eccentricity and madness. It happened to all blacks in London after a while, whether today, tomorrow or yesterday; and William saw it as inevitable. Unlike Buckram, Neville had no social urges to charm him back from lunacy. He was gone. Gone to a world where Georgie was the Devil incarnate and Charlotte Tell his succubus.
Nowadays he looked in on Neville whenever he was passing St Giles’s High Street. The preacher could always be found talking over the gravestones of the illustrious dead; addressing Andrew Marvell, Godfrey Kneller and Oliver Plunkett as if they were present as children.
‘Keep away from Georgie,’ he warned. ‘Don’t let him over your threshold, or he’ll get you too. He will, y’know, he will!’
William lacked the resolve to tell him that he was in very deed a guest under the George’s roof, living wholly on the man’s charity. His constant tirades against Charlotte (‘that she-captain of Satan’) were wearing out William’s patience. He could see a time coming when he’d have to leave Neville to the tender ministrations of the Reverend Smyth.
William had started to wonder if Neville had ever had any other friends.
A single, smoky lanthorn shed garish brown light over the crowd jammed into Bull Inn Court. The narrow passage was crammed with black party-goers dressed in some of the finest clothes William had ever seen. The overflow spilled onto Maiden Lane where yet more arrivals congregated, walking in large grou
ps up and down the street, waiting for the crush to thin.
A gang of white apprentices – William recognized them from the coach-builders in Langley Street – gathered outside the steps of the Cider Cellar and studied the hundred or so black people with respectful fascination.
William had never seen so many elegant black women in one place. He wondered who they were, where they had come from.
A few of them were dressed identically, sweltering under puffed polonaise dresses and short petticoats decorated with furbelows exposing nicely turned ankles. They all wore dangerously unstable wigs and extreme hats crowned with pink, white and gold feathers. Not a shred of calico in sight. When they spoke it was with affected Mayfair lilts and Court-End phrasing. Their male counterparts were equally unbelievable in their purple and yellow coats, nankeen breeches and short-top boots. William overheard a number of them speaking in French about a recent trip to Copenhagen and a disastrous weekend away at the country seat of some lecherous aristocrat.
Who were these people? It was as if the memory of slavery had passed them by. As if they’d never known bondage. They were as free as a freeborn black could be in this white world, and William didn’t like the look of them at all; the haughty way they dismissed the shabby black tramps weaving between them with their begging cups and their mocking appraisal of their fellow revellers. They were all strangers to him, strangers to the rookeries of Ratcliffe and Seven Dials, strangers to the auction blocks of Wapping and the press-gangs that haunted the all-hour kens. Beside them, William felt like a failed actor, a ruined gambler, an unrewarded soldier, an ex-slave and a sadblack.
He pushed himself into the mass of bodies clogging Bull Inn Court, desperate to find someone he knew.
The noise from the crowd didn’t quite drown the noise from the massive alehouse. Bass-heavy music – plucked strings, wild brass and polyrhythms – rattled the glass and ancient timbers of the Bull Inn. And the waiting throng, though packed solid, somehow moved in time to the music in a weld of hips, elbows and anxious-happy faces.