‘– I am learning to watch, and to listen, and to keep a still tongue. There are many things to learn, many certainties to be tested –’
She stopped writing again, lifted her head for a moment, looking sightlessly out of the screened window to the little shaded garden beyond. It was very hot and so humid that each movement brought perspiration. A small, pale flash of colour caught her eye. In the garden Maybelle sat upon a swing seat under a live oak tree, a book resting upon her lap, the light muslin of her dress drifting in the breeze created by the moving swing. At the foot of the tree a young black boy pulled with sleepy rhythm at the rope ingeniously rigged to the seat’s chains, back and forth, back and forth; from where she sat Mattie could hear the faint squeak of the chains. The picture was perfect. The girl’s bowed, ringleted head, her young, intent face, were the very incarnation of innocence and beauty. Pale muslin drifted in the moving air. The tree itself, enclosing the scene, draped with the magical drifts of moss, was something from a fairy tale.
But the child – the black child, sleepy, well-fed, untroubled – was a slave, owned body and soul by his Packard master.
Mattie sat for a very long time, watching, the letter forgotten, a troubled furrow in her brow.
‘’Belle? ’Belle, do come.’ Dorcas’s voice, her slow drawl so pronounced that she made two syllables of her sister’s diminutive. ‘The Perry Street Smiths have arrived – they’re askin’ for you, sugar –’
Maybelle threw aside the book and slid from the swing, straightening and fluffing her billowing skirts, putting a hand to her hair. Mattie smiled a little as she watched the girl drop her shoulders and lift her chin prettily before stepping with carefully graceful steps towards the house. Maybelle was thirteen years old, her sister Dorcas fifteen and already a woman engaged to be married; the younger Packard daughter, Clarrie, had just passed her twelfth birthday and was already wearing her hair up and her skirts long. In this society – and this climate – girls did not remain children for long.
Mattie picked up her pen again; if she did not finish this letter now she never would.
The boy beneath the tree had come to his feet, and started towards the house behind his young mistress. ’Belle stopped for a moment, pointing, speaking sharply. The child scampered back, collected cushions, books and a small handkerchief from the seat. Both disappeared from sight into the house. The swing moved, settled, was still.
‘– I must tell you something of the house.’
As Mattie wrote she could almost see Constance’s pale eyes settle upon such an important issue with an interest entirely unaroused by what had gone before. She sighed a little. It really was very hot.
‘Because of the extreme heat experienced in this part of the world, the ceiling of each room is very lofty, and the windows and doors very tall, to allow the flow of air. Most rooms have fans depending from the ceilings that are worked by a clever contraption of rope, a little like those I have seen pictured in houses in India. The room in which I sit – a bedroom, but prettily furnished as a sitting room too – has ceilings at least fifteen feet high, and doors and windows of perhaps twelve feet. The bed was made at a local plantation and is huge – one must climb three steps to reach it! – and the rest of the furniture is in complete and very attractive perspective. Consequently, tall as I am, I feel a little like Tom Thumb.’
Mattie pushed the pages from her abruptly, dropped the pen, lifted her hands to her damp, heavy hair, longing to take out the pins that held it wound about her head, weighty as a Saracen’s helmet, longing to divest herself of the constricting corset, the frilled layers of her dress. Lord, it was so very hot! She grabbed the pen again, splashing ink in her haste to have her task done.
‘Fashions here, like everything else, seem a little exaggerated – the hoops are wider, the hats larger, the feathers more feathery and the fans a sight to see. And waists are definitely smaller. Elizabeth would not like it at all, since it is considered the very worst of manners for a girl to eat healthily in public; Dorcas, ’Belle and Clarrie all stuff themselves silly before going to a party, to prevent hunger pains from shaming them. I of course am a matron, and am allowed to eat what I wish.’
She was aware that her writing was deteriorating in direct relation to her patience.
A tap on the door brought her head up. ‘Yes?’
A black maid, in neat dark green uniform and spotlessly white turban and apron entered the room, a wide smile on her pleasant face. ‘Miss Mattie, Miss Dorcas and Miss ’Belle sent to find you. There’s visitors to see you.’
‘Thank you, Rosie. I’ll be there directly.’
As Mattie turned back to her letter, the maid did not move but stood in silent if still smiling reproval, watching her. ‘You want that I should do your hair for you, Miss Mattie?’ the girl asked at last.
‘No, thank you, Rosie.’ Mattie scribbled a last few words then, with a sense of enormous relief, signed and sanded the letter.
Rosie stood, still watching. Still reproving.
‘That will be all, thank you, Rosie. Please tell Miss Dorcas I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘You want one of your pretty dresses out, Miss Mattie? The yellow one, perhaps? I’ll just –’ The girl moved a little tentatively towards the huge wardrobe that stood in the corner of the room.
‘I really don’t think so. This one is quite –’
‘But Miss Mattie, the yellow sure does suit you – an’ with company and all?’
Mattie sighed, and acquiesced. As she was beginning to learn one almost always did. ‘Very well, Rosie. The yellow.’
‘And them pretty green earbobs?’ It was barely a question as the girl bustled to the wardrobe.
‘And the green earbobs.’
* * *
The double parlour of the Packard house was on the main floor, across the hall from the curving staircase that swept gracefully from the first floor to the second. It was a lovely room, the polished wooden floor and white-painted panelled walls giving an impression of space and coolness on the hottest of days. It was, in effect, two rooms with no dividing wall, each a faithful reflection of the other. At either end an identical, elaborate fireplace stood, the grates filled now with flowers; there were, too, identical chandeliers hanging in the centre of each ceiling, their beauty reflected in the mirrors that hung above the fireplaces. The furniture was very fine, much of it brought from Europe some fifteen years before, where Bess and Henry Packard had travelled on their wedding trip, the house itself having been the young couple’s wedding present from Henry’s parents. Today the tall windows at one end of the room had been closed and shuttered against the sun. At the opposite end they were open, though screened, to allow the circulation of air. The scent of flowers was everywhere.
The far end of the room was full of people. All the Packards were there, and Johnny. Standing talking to Johnny and his uncle was a tall, distinguished-looking man with a luxuriant moustache.
‘Why of course the British and the French would support us,’ he was saying as Mattie quietly opened the great, easy-moving door. ‘Where else are they goin’ to get the cotton they need? I tell you, their own good sense will lead them to recognize us, never mind the natural goodwill they undoubtedly harbour towards us! Where would the European economies be without King Cotton? An’ they can’t get cotton from the Yankees, that’s for sure!’
‘There’s something in what you say, Samson, no doubt about it. It’s a pity this year’s crop has been so good, though – seems there’ll be a lot of cotton around for a while –’
‘Not enough. Never enough!’
‘Does it matter if they support us or not?’ A tall, fair, handsome lad who had been talking to ’Belle turned to join the conversation. ‘We don’t need their support, Pa. We don’t need anyone’s support! If the damned Yankees – pardon me, ladies – want a fight then we’ll give it to them! And we’ll whip ’em. What do you say, Edward?’
‘We sure enough will.’ Edward, small, slight and
dark, with his mother’s Creole looks, flashed white teeth in an excited grin. ‘Any Southerner can whip any two Northerners with one hand tied behind his back, and that’s a given truth! Why, most of ’em can’t even ride, let alone shoot straight! I tell you – you could almost feel sorry for ’em.’
‘I couldn’t!’ ’Belle exclaimed, her eyes, dark as her brother’s, fixed upon the tall youth beside her. ‘That I couldn’t! I couldn’t feel sorry for them at all! If they won’t stop interfering with us they deserve everything they get!’
Mattie stood listening at the door, waiting for someone to notice her.
’Belle’s remark received general approval from the other young people; only another tall young man, so like the object of ’Belle’s attention that they surely must be brothers, shook his head a little, unsmiling.
‘What’s the matter, Arthur?’ Edward’s grin showed a glint of good-natured malice. ‘Don’t you fancy your chances against them puny Yankee factory boys?’
The lad shrugged. ‘That’s just it. It ain’t the Yankees we’ve got to beat – it’s their factories. You can’t fight iron with cotton. You can’t sink ships with pea-shooters.’
There was a small, dangerous silence. ‘You sayin’ that the South couldn’t whip the No’th in a week an’ be home in time for Sunday dinner?’ Edward enquired, his voice deceptively gentle, his drawl slower than ever.
‘I’m sayin’ it isn’t that simple, is all –’ The lad broke off as, lifting his head, he caught sight of Mattie standing at the other end of the room. She thought she caught a glimpse of relief in his eyes at her timely entrance.
At the same moment Aunt Bess had seen her and hurried to her now, soft, plump white hands extended. ‘Mattie, darlin’ – here you are! Come meet our good friends the Smiths – they live on Perry Street – the pink house I pointed out the other day, you remember, honey? Everyone, here’s Johnny’s English bride – isn’t she just precious?’
* * *
Later that night, alone at last with Johnny in their room, Mattie returned to the subject that had cropped up time and again during the day. Over Rosie’s scandalized protests she had insisted that she was perfectly capable of making her own preparations for bed – the first time she had actually managed to win that particular battle – and was sitting at the vast dressing table, at which she was certain a family of six could comfortably have eaten dinner, wearing a blessedly loose dark silk robe, brushing her hair. Beyond the window the crickets called noisily, a sound still so foreign to her that she found it distracting. Candlelight flickered about the pale walls and high ceiling; the mosquito net that hung from the tester had been drawn about the great bed, making a cavern of shadows in the centre of the room. A candle stood beside the mirror. Mattie drew the brush through her straight, heavy hair with long strokes, her face abstracted. ‘Johnny?’
‘Mm?’ Johnny, in shirt and breeches, his coat and waistcoat tossed over a nearby chair, had been standing by the screened window that overlooked the garden. At the sound of her voice he turned.
‘All this talk of war. It isn’t really going to happen, is it?’ She had stopped her movement, the brush poised above the dark hair that was spread upon her shoulders. The face the mirror reflected was pale and serious. She watched him in the glass, half expecting laughter, easy reassurance.
She got neither. For a long moment Johnny stood, a shadow in shadows, silent. Then, ‘I don’t know,’ he said, honestly. ‘I hope to God not. But things have certainly been stirred up these past months. And if Lincoln wins the election -’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t think he’ll let the slaveholdin’ states leave the Union. And I sure as hell don’t think the slaveholdin’ states will stay with him as President. So – who knows?’
‘But – war? A civil war between North and South? It’s horrible!’
‘Of course it is.’ Johnny’s voice sharpened a little. ‘But remember this, Mattie – whatever happens, none of this is of the South’s choosing. We aren’t the ones trying to change things. All we ask is to be left alone. We aren’t trying to force them out of business, to tamper with their lives, their rights, their own way of doing things! Like I say, we just want to be left alone, that’s all. We won’t attack them, be very sure of that. Why should we? But if they attack us – if they won’t leave us be to live our own lives in our own way – what would you have us do? Roll over on our backs an’ invite them to walk all over us?’
‘No. No, of course not. But –’
‘You’ve a lot to learn about the South, Mattie – but here’s a pretty simple lesson to take to heart; you back a Southerner into a corner and he’ll fight. To the last breath he’ll fight, and the last drop of blood. No matter what the odds.’
‘And what are the odds?’ she asked, very quietly.
He did not reply.
‘The young Smith lad was right, wasn’t he? The North has the factories – the armaments – the ships – the men. Their resources vastly outweigh yours –’ Too late she realized what she had said. ‘Ours,’ she corrected herself after a small, difficult silence.
Johnny had come to stand behind her, looming tall in the shadows. His skin was dark against the fine white material of his shirt, which lay open at the neck. Mattie suddenly wished with all her heart that she had not brought up this awful subject.
‘England won’t recognize a breakaway Confederacy,’ she said. ‘You know it. The Abolitionist sympathies are too great, the Abolitionists themselves too influential. No government could withstand them. And without England, France won’t act. The South will be alone. Johnny, you know it – you must have spoken to people in England – whatever their private sympathies they won’t risk confrontation with the North.’ She tilted her head to look at him. She could feel the warmth of him, wanted so much for him to touch her that it was like a physical pain.
‘England must do as she wishes,’ he said. ‘And France, too. It’s our fight, not theirs. We don’t want to leave the Union, Mattie, though by God we’ll defend our right to do so if we have to. For God’s sake, it’s as much ours as anyone’s; some would say, with justice, more so! Some of the slaveholdin’ states are the oldest in the Union! That should give us more rights, not less! You can surely see that we cannot – will not! – have the North dictate to us – force us to our knees – destroy us and our way of life – without fightin’ for our cause and our country.’ The last words were spoken very quietly, yet so forcibly that they might have been shouted aloud; a cry of pride.
Despair filled her; despair, and love, and a sudden surge of fierce and unexpected admiration. ‘You’d fight?’ she asked into the quiet. ‘If it comes to it, to war – you’ll go?’ She was surprised to see the bright sheen of tears in the eyes of her reflection. For a treacherous instant the image of Coombe House rose before her, infinitely dear, infinitely safe.
‘Yes,’ he said. His long, brown hand reached and took the forgotten hairbrush from her still hand. ‘Yes, I’ll go. What else would you have me do?’ He began, very gently, to brush her hair, pulling it back over her shoulders, lifting it, heavy, in his hands. She closed her eyes, feeling still the tears behind the lids, and tilted her head back against him.
She had had very little idea of what to expect from the physical side of the marriage union; there had been no-one either to warn or to encourage her. In this even her father had failed her. Cousin Constance had paled and threatened to faint when she had tried to touch upon the subject, and even Anna Johnstone had proved to be disappointingly ignorant, for all her hints and knowing looks. So Mattie had approached this particular unknown with some understandable qualms. But to her delight and astonishment, after the initial, undeniable shock, the intimate pleasures of the marriage bed had enthralled her; not simply the love-making, though that seemed to her to be an almost wickedly beguiling activity, but the lovely, lulling sense of warmth that simply lying beside him brought, listening to his quiet breath in the night, knowing that if she were to reach a hand he would turn, arms open, to her.
She had not understood before her marriage the physical thrall of love; now she did. Unladylike she knew it must be, but there could be no denying that the touch of her husband’s hand, the sight of his lean, handsome face, the tall, easy-moving body quickened her blood in the most embarrassing way and at the most inappropriate of moments. That this both surprised and amused Johnny she had known from the start; how much it pleased him she was only just coming to understand.
Outside the window, in the warm and heavy-scented darkness, the crickets kept up their cacophony of sound. Beyond and above it, a night bird called.
Johnny drew her from the stool, tossing the hairbrush aside. She laid her face against his chest, eyes still closed; felt the lean, hard hands that slid down her back, catching upon the silk of her robe, cupping her buttocks and pulling her close to him. Somewhere in the dark house a door closed, footsteps sounded, and it was quiet again.
‘Will it happen?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. No-one knows. Shall I ring for Thomas?’
She sniffed. Lifted her head. ‘Useless Southerner! Can’t you undress yourself?’ Her hands were already busy at his shirt buttons. The tears were drying saltily on her cheeks.
‘For God’s own sake, woman – you aren’t suggestin’ I should take off my own boots?’ The drawl was lazily exaggerated.
‘No,’ she said, sinking to her knees, smiling now, as he had intended, shaking off the thoughts of slaughter. ‘No, I’m not.’
Much later they lay beneath the mosquito net, which hung pale and ghostly as cobweb above them, naked, drawing apart for coolness, on the edge of sleep.
Freedom's Banner Page 6