For the Reckord

  Dawes, send her back to the slave-gang.

  Lights up in ANNIE’s room. She talks to LUCINDA and plaits her hair.

  LUCINDA: Here’s a book to pass the time till the powder works.

  ANNIE: What’s it about.

  LUCINDA: A lady who pleasured her slaves, and murdered them and her husband by witchcraft.

  ANNIE: I trust it has a happy ending.

  LUCINDA: No. Bakkra will beat you black and blue, then lock you up till you breed.

  ANNIE: He won’t live long enough.

  LUCINDA: Then Cupid inherits and you marry him. Happy ending.

  ANNIE: I fear for Cupid’s pain and death. I reek and sizzle with fear for him.

  LUCINDA: His mother fears you.

  ANNIE: She’s a martyr. I’m a murderer.

  LUCINDA: Is there something murderous about women in your family?

  ANNIE: It frightens me. I became a woman at twelve, and started seeing the dead walk. My servant said she had to fuck the devil out of me, and so she did it for years, and held it over me when I wished to marry. So I set her alight. I do fear there’s more rage than love.

  LUCINDA: (With sympathy.) Yes milady.

  ANNIE: I put you in danger. Go back to the kitchen.

  LUCINDA: You’ll say you didn’t like me?

  ANNIE: Stroke my feet for the last time. (LUCINDA strokes her feet.) More, more.

  LUCINDA: Greedy pig.

  ANNIE: Now go back to the kitchen.

  LUCINDA: (Refusing.) I’m so glad Herrera’s alive, I wouldn’t mind joining him.

  ANNIE: (Listening to her belly.) But that’s not the big news… LUCINDA: You’re well again?

  ANNIE: (Dancing.) Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Lights down.

  PALMER enters the drawing-room.

  PALMER: (Shouting.) Milady!

  ANNIE comes downstairs.

  ANNIE: My lord.

  PALMER: You never dress up for me. (He holds her.) For a man like me you undress.

  ANNIE: Oh you can’t. I’ve bled.

  PALMER: You’ve lost my baby again?

  ANNIE: You grind me too keenly.

  PALMER: But not for a week.

  ANNIE: It’s unnatural at this time grinding at all.

  PALMER: Jesus Christ. I heard you rode all over the parish.

  ANNIE: Only on the estate.

  PALMER: You didn’t hear me tell you to stay in the house. (Whips her several times with his riding-whip.) You think I went clear to England for a mule?

  ANNIE: No, clearly you went for a breeding slave.

  PALMER: They’ll pull twelve children from your belly, and number one will start now. I’m going to man you and breed you and lock you up for nine months till you drop, and nine months after that, one a year, till my quiver’s full. So help me God. (He drags her up the stairs.)

  Act Two

  SCENE ONE

  Next day. A hellish noise offstage of servants squealing and pans dropping. ABUKU, the rat-catcher, runs in chasing rats. He shows ANNIE three dead rats.

  ANNIE: They look like men. Who are they?

  ABUKU: Rats milady.

  ANNIE: This white one is bakkra, this brown one is Dawes, and who is this one?

  ABUKU: This black one is Mister Rhone.

  ANNIE: This one had worms, this one lost his head, and this one had fever and his eyes fell out. What shall we do with em?

  ABUKU: Bury dem.

  ANNIE: Bury dem, bury dem,

  Bury the three of ‘em,

  Bury dem, bury dem,

  Hell will be rid of ‘em.

  ABUKU exits. ANNIE dances.

  Where I can’t witch dem I’ll guile ‘em,

  And gull ‘em,

  And prey on their endless sexual fears,

  And bury dem.

  PALMER: (Entering.) No dancing Miss Annie. No gallivantin’. Lie down in the sun and get black. Get the servants to rub fat on your back and stroke your foot-bottom. And I will come and kiss you all over.

  ANNIE: Shall we visit our neighbours?

  PALMER: (Mocking the neighbours’ questions.) “And how is England, and how is Jamaica, and how is the weather?”

  ANNIE: (Laughing.) Good wholesome questions.

  PALMER: You want to get out of the house.

  ANNIE: I’ll go down to the mill and watch the work. Whatever do they think about while they’re slaving?

  PALMER: Love, money, liquor, tobacco and food. What else?

  ANNIE: And being whipped would you think?

  PALMER: (Laughing.) A reproach most ably contrived. Are you all black and blue? I’ll tickle you pink. (Tickles her.)

  ANNIE: (Helpless with laughter; screaming.) I’m sore. Struth no, Mr. Palmer.

  PALMER: I’ll take you tomorrow to the races.

  ANNIE: I’ll go with Cupid.

  PALMER: Why?

  ANNIE: Then there’ll be no constraint on my purse, nor check on my wagers.

  PALMER: (Indirect apology.) My father whipped my mother but once, and never had to again.

  ANNIE: Was he a brute as well?

  PALMER: And she was a saint. She grandmothered Cupid through fever and flux. Gave him cocoa-cream. Saved his life. Begged for his freedom.

  ANNIE: Was she abolitionist?

  PALMER: Oh Miss Annie, I never know when you mock me. Are your days empty?

  ANNIE: Oh perfectly.

  PALMER: You miss England? The painters, wits, poets.

  ANNIE: Good God no. I’m a country girl. I hear cook complain to Lucinda about her inamorato and there’s my literature. (Jamaican accent.) Lawd Lucinda, says cook, man’s tail is too disorderly, and when I rudeness dem I love dem and wrap up in dem, can’t walk me own road, weak, like sickness. This pretty nayga say he love me, and I decide to cover him with me glory, and let him into me glory-hole, and from then I don’t see him. But don’t bother wid heartache, says Lucinda, it’s not strictly necessary.

  PALMER roars.

  PALMER: The accent, Lawd.

  DAWES enters.

  ANNIE: My mare needs a shoe. I shall see to her.

  PALMER: But no riding, no dancing, no gallivantin’. It’s not strictly necessary.

  Exit ANNIE.

  DAWES: Bakkra, Bea found this letter in milady’s room.

  PALMER: Did she read it?

  DAWES: No sir.

  PALMER: Did you?

  DAWES: It is private bakkra.

  PALMER: How do you know it’s private?

  DAWES: I read it bakkra.

  PALMER: (Reads aloud.) “Dear Mother. I had Palmer for over two months on that boat boarding me five times a day. I tell him his mouth’s raw, he jumps out of bed, chews stick for two minutes, there’s a thick froth all over his gob, he wipes it off with his hand, wipes that on the linen. Holy God what have we to put up with simply to eat!”

  Silence. PALMER sits down. Rent with anger. Walks around. Sits. Groans.

  DAWES: Sink a rum sir. Settle your liver.

  No answer. DAWES withdraws. PALMER knocks back two long rums. His breath gets short. He sits, reaching for breath. DAWES re-enters.

  PALMER: It is revenge for the beating.

  DAWES: And but a feeble revenge.

  PALMER: She left it there for all and sundry to read.

  DAWES: It is mere sulk and pique bakkra. Not serious. These are words.

  PALMER: You fear worse? You fear harm?

  DAWES: Yes sir.

  PALMER: Physical harm?

  DAWES: And material, yes sir, and madness above all.

  PALMER: (Hardly able to breathe.) There could be harm greater than losing her? Losing so soon whatever love my wealth did command. I say my wealth. Or fearing it commanded nothing.

  DAWES: Milady is a scorpio sir. Every torment done to a turn. They walk a tight rope. Play the leeways to a whisker, and work every bolt-hole.

  PALMER: When we met she gazed at me Dawes. We lay a-bed gazing.

  DAWES: Bakkra, gazing shouldn’t be overlong. It delivers less than it
promises, and may sour in a week. And you never can tell what they’re gazing at. She gazed at five estates. You gazed at her.

  PALMER: You see Dawes, she is not a black woman. I wouldn’t tell everybody this, but between the sheets it f-f-f-f-t. Gone.

  DAWES: You lose it?

  PALMER: Too soon, too often. It’s like cane-juice goin’ to waste. All over the goddam bed. On her belly. On her belly. On me. I wipe it off and put it where it belongs, and mount again and again before I am ready, and she laughs at me with disdain and satisfaction. You have any such experience with women?

  DAWES: When you start losin’ them, you start lovin’ them, and get weak and jealous. Now the black women, you fuck them like a captain sir. They get weak with love. Hang on to you. Naked, without pretence.

  PALMER: Dawes, send for Dr. Baillie. I want him to look at her.

  DAWES: I don’t think she believes in doctors, your honour.

  PALMER: Send for Baillie.

  DAWES exits as ANNIE re-enters.

  PALMER: Miss Annie I am down in the slave-yard if anybody wants me.

  ANNIE: I’ll bathe in the sun. (Exits upstairs.)

  PALMER exits with DAWES. ANNIE sunbathes. CUPID enters her room by the backstairs.

  CUPID: Where’s my mother?

  ANNIE: No one’s here. Silence. As if they’ve gone to church.

  CUPID: That’s how I’ll remember this house. People talking in glances and whispers.

  ANNIE: Your father shouting in a house full of glances and whispers.

  CUPID: If I can see that selling people is wrong, why can’t he?

  ANNIE: Men are, of all beasts, the most brutish, and your father among the more brutish of men.

  CUPID: Yet it would be harder for me to leave this house than for a snail to crawl from its slimy, comfortable shell. I’m too fat, too spoilt, too blind, and knives must gut me till I’m lean and trim, and smoke and fire preserve me.

  ANNIE: I like you very much as you are, though you sound very solemn.

  CUPID: I spent the day among runaways.

  ANNIE: They didn’t cut your throat?

  CUPID: They are tragic men, bound in all manhood and nature to fight, yet certain to die. So much fighting. So little freedom. Maybe you can’t fight for freedom. Maybe the two have nothing to do with each other. Like storks and babies. Maybe only brutes win fights, and so fighting merely keeps brutes in power.

  ANNIE: Will you join the runaways?

  CUPID: My mother’s question.

  ANNIE: What do they want?

  CUPID: The good flat land your five estates are on.

  ANNIE: What would they want with them?

  CUPID: Dig up the cane and plant food to eat. Not to sell.

  ANNIE: Subsistence.

  CUPID: No, their bellies are a steady market, not erratic, so if they can organise feeding themselves, then they can organise cash-crops like sugar for export. We do it the other way round and starve.

  ANNIE: The estates are your father’s.

  CUPID: That’s why they fight.

  ANNIE: Are they ready to die?

  CUPID: I live in the deep hell of yes and no and yes again. I fear pain, gaol and gaolers. Torture seems… I’m afraid bakkra will catch me and hang me.

  ANNIE: You want to save the world.

  CUPID: If I am worthy.

  ANNIE: How do we become worthy?

  CUPID: Abstain. Like Christ and St. Paul. Avoid women and self-abuse. Every night I pray, give me a clean heart oh God, so I may be worthy to turn this wicked world upside down.

  He glances at her body.

  ANNIE: (Noting the glance.) Did you come to see me or your mother?

  CUPID: (In a tremble.) I was looking for my mother.

  ANNIE: Do you hate women?

  CUPID: Lust conceals hate.

  ANNIE: Because it is made a sin, even in the innocent crib, and laden with guilt. The only love children get is platonic, although they can’t breed.

  CUPID: Why is it made a sin?

  ANNIE: To change our nature. Make us cruel. Soldiers, not lovers. War follows peace, and peace is arming for war. Even sex is often the elation of conquest, if there is any elation. Our quick flesh can be as dead as India rubber.

  CUPID: Milady dwells on the flesh.

  ANNIE: What could be more central? Why isn’t it dwelt on? Even our orgies and our lechery are disappointing, blighted, like Mr. Blake’s rose. D’you know that poem?

  “Oh rose thou art sick,

  The invisible worm

  That flies in the night, in the howling storm

  Hath found out thy bed of crimson joy

  And his dark secret love

  Doth thy life destroy.”

  CUPID: I like the bed of crimson joy.

  ANNIE: Oh Cupid, if flesh is evil isn’t it easier to stick bayonets through men’s bodies so only their souls need saving?

  CUPID: So what shall we do to be saved?

  ANNIE: Turn these five great-houses into schools, and bring children back to their senses. They can’t even love their parents. Leave home and feel guilty about never seeing them. Then set up in marriage. There ought to be a Royal society for the protection of sensual children. Shall we join?

  CUPID: They’d take us away in strait-jackets.

  ANNIE: (Laughing.) Yes. Unless we convert men to Satan. He’s the fallen angel of love, driven from heaven by a sexless God. Failing that, fill your pocket.

  CUPID: With but a little persuasion you would make me a pagan.

  ANNIE: Witches have fought for centuries for carnal insurrection. There is no other revolt worth dying for. Your mother believes in that felicity politicians speak of. I do not.

  CUPID: My mother’s a hero.

  ANNIE: Heroes are so few they don’t count. I want you alive.

  CUPID: (Laughing.) Living within milady’s India rubber legs.

  ANNIE: (Laughing.) And in her possessive arms.

  They hug. CUPID breaks off, runs downstairs where he finds his mother.

  CUPID: How is Sammy?

  PRINCESS: For sale.

  CUPID: Slaves outnumber slavers ten to one. Let slaves end slavery. I’m a free man. (PRINCESS slaps him.) The rebels will end up slaving for their general.

  PRINCESS: The rebels don’t have a general.

  CUPID: Is he a field-marshal?

  PRINCESS: He’s only a colonel.

  CUPID: He’ll be an emperor yet. Like Henri Christophe.

  PRINCESS: That’s what she told you?

  CUPID: Slavery will be followed by wage-slavery. Wretches working day and night for a pittance.

  PRINCESS: Wage slaves are not chained or branded or sold.

  CUPID: Mamma, the greater part of the world will always hunger and thirst. And poverty will always plenty.

  PRINCESS: You’ll lay down your life lying with her?

  CUPID: And she with me.

  PRINCESS: Palmer’s sent for the doctor to cut her. Maybe they’ll make one thing and cut you.

  Exit leaving CUPID stunned. He races upstairs to ANNIE and we see them listening as DAWES brings in PALMER and the doctor.

  PALMER: She conceives easily, doc, but she can’t hold the child. I believe she deliberately miscarries.

  DOCTOR: She must rest. Sedentary pastimes. Sketching, knitting, light reading. There’s a fixed amount of energy in the body, and the budding womb needs it all. Any vigorous movement takes energy from the foetus and its growth.

  PALMER: Any vigorous movement?

  DOCTOR: Any vigorous movement.

  PALMER: Any vigorous movement at all?

  DOCTOR: Any vigorous movement at all.

  PALMER: At all, at all?

  DOCTOR: Well, of course, your marital duties, your manly functions, but that’s your movement, not hers. Does she lie still? She lies still, does she not?

  PALMER: She thrashes about.

  DOCTOR: Isn’t she a lady?

  PALMER: She’s high, yes, the highest. But she wriggles her pelvis. Excuse
the language.

  DOCTOR: She has pleasure in it?

  PALMER: Yes doc. You mustn’t ask me again.

  DOCTOR: But, speaking medically, does she actually enjoy it?

  PALMER: Yes doc.

  DOCTOR: Even revel in it?

  PALMER: Yes, doc.

  DOCTOR: You should have a word with the bishop. This may be wickedness. Pleasure is not part of the divine prescription. See to it she lies perfectly still, with her eyes shut. And lots of sketching. Light reading. No serious pursuits of any kind, save household duties. She should live, in fact, like an invalid.

  PALMER: But the negresses hoe and weed till the day they drop.

  DOCTOR: They are animal.

  PALMER: They drop like goat-shit, Jesus Christ, nothing can shake ‘em. What’s wrong with her?

  DOCTOR: The man who does not know sick women does not know women. Perpetual infirmities. Of every ten women who conceive, one will die, and two or three more disabled. How are her nerves?

  PALMER: Very good.

  DOCTOR: And in your opinion she actually enjoys it?

  PALMER: You steer back to that again?

  DOCTOR: It may of course be that she’s suffering from an inflammation of the womb.

  PALMER: You can handle that?

  DOCTOR: Yes oh yes. You bruise the groin till there are blisters and sores, and they draw the inflammation from the womb to themselves; but for ladies well born, leeches might be less painful, applied to the breasts or outer lips of the genitals before the period is expected. Leeching is of course more expensive than blistering.

  PALMER: We’d have to tie her down. She doesn’t believe in those things.

  DOCTOR: But her lust is disturbing in a lady. I’ll look at her clitoris. Unnatural growth of the clitoris is likely to lead to immorality as well as serious disease.

  PALMER: Immorality?

  DOCTOR: Gross immorality if the clitoris is long. The longer, the grosser.

  PALMER: Immorality.

  DOCTOR: Amputation may be necessary.

  PALMER goes silent.

  I hear rumours infernal.

  PALMER: You believe in such things?

  DOCTOR: Witches have conspired in bed against us from the days of Eve and the snake. They can’t breed, so there is no check on their lewdness, and only God knows who they mark. They know it’s the rebellion we fear most, and they practice it to wreck our happiness, and our empire over them. Sex and witchcraft is one word. The only cure is to castrate her.