James Barry was completely absorbed by Louis’s quantitative categorisations of symptoms. The first chill of evening had descended when he heard footsteps, which disturbed him strangely, advancing up the dusty roadway. He stood up and looked out at the two figures approaching in the faint light of a lantern attached to the pack on the side of a donkey. He knew Isaac at once, here he came, bringing the doctor’s new books, equipment and tailored clothes, ordered direct from Bond Street, carefully cut according to his diminutive specifications. And he knew the figure who strode alongside Isaac’s stooping lurch. At first just an outline in darkness, the hangman’s wide shoulders, the mane of white hair falling onto the collar, the mass of white whiskers, which would have looked pretentious and ridiculous on a younger or a smaller man. But above all, Barry recognised the proud turn of the head, the sure stride, still there in a man of sixty, the curve of his shoulder as he turned to look back at the town, lit like a chain of glittering trinkets, a necklace around a faceless black void.
Barry flung himself down the steps and into the old man’s arms.
‘Hello, soldier!’
Francisco took Barry’s small form into his embrace with a father’s tenderness. Barry leaned into that gigantic warm strength, still there after all the years travelling the world. The tears he had not let fall for over a decade washed down the doctor’s cheeks. But he spoke quite clearly, and without hesitation or fear.
‘You must tell me every detail, Francisco. I want to hear everything. But there is no need to speak the main news. If it were not so, you would not be here. My mother is dead.’
* * *
This is the story told by General Francisco de Miranda.
‘The guava has an intense musky, sweetish smell. Here. This confiture has been made from the fruit. No sugar has been added. Taste it. There. Exceptional, isn’t it? I remembered that you used to like sweet things. Even when you were a baby, you used to dip your finger into the apricot preserves. The flesh of the fruit contains dozens of tiny seeds. I remove them when making the jam. The taste is especially distinctive in my planter’s punch. Here is the rule of proportions: one of sour and two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak. For sour I use squeezed limes, for sweet I take the cane molasses which darkens the mixture, for strong the island’s rum. And for the fourth measure I use the juice of oranges, grapefruit, mangoes, and guavas. Some of the colonists drink this for breakfast! We served it later in the morning, and then slept well during our siestas.
‘Mary Ann loved the tropics. She was like you. She thrived in the heat and never suffered from the insects. She wasn’t like the other white women, who wilted into the mountains. We intended to sail on to Venezuela next spring. I wanted her to see my country. I had no fears for her health. She was full of good spirits, ideas, adventures. She armed herself with loose white shawls and parasols. She hired a guide with a mule. She learned Spanish. She had the soul of an explorer. You should be proud of her. The colonial wives received her well enough. The place is rather like it is here, I imagine – too small to support old scandals. Or at least nothing bad enough to ostracise someone blown in upon the fresh wind of curiosity. We installed ourselves in a very handsome residence, where the biggest slave market on the island used to be held. You could have watched the sales from our front verandah. The slaves have some rights now, some channels of justice to which they can appeal. They cannot, without their consent, be sold on to other masters. But it still happens. As for the freed slaves, after seven years as indentured labourers they are free to work where they can. But I feel dreadful pity for the offspring of the two races, whose numbers are increasing. Often they belong nowhere, and to no one.
‘I cannot imagine being owned. All my life I have fought for the freedom of men to lift up their heads and look the next man in the eye, proudly and without fear. God created all men in His own image. But I suppose this is a man’s view. For when I said as much to Mary Ann she declared that women’s bodies are always for sale, to the highest bidder. But that only harlots manage to keep the cash. Condorcet was of the same opinion. He was a great advocate of the rights of women. I knew him when I was in Paris. Poor fellow. He died an unjust death.
‘Well, we lived within sight of the docks where the slave traders were unloaded. Our own servant, Immaculata, witnessed these things, for she has been on the island for over twenty years. The slaves were made to stand upon blocks to be sold. They were sold a day or two after their arrival, so that the planters could be given due notice of the sale. On the day of the sales the captains of the slave ships used to raise their ensigns and fire off a gun to give notice of the event. The indentured servants were sold on the wharf, but some of the plantation slaves were sold on board ship and then deposited directly into the waiting wherries. Many of them died of infections, or the bloody flux. Some were found dead in the hold. The planters were prepared to pay substantial amounts for a healthy slave. Many of the townsfolk, especially the women, took pity on these poor people and rushed to give them food and clean water. Immaculata used to prepare fresh fried fish for them as soon as she heard that the slavers were in dock. The general outrage at seeing these half-starved, maddened creatures emerging into daylight sometimes caused trouble in the port. One of the captains, known to be a cruel man, was mobbed and beaten. Immaculata told us proudly of her part in this riot. Like Simon Peter, she was personally responsible for slicing off the tyrant’s ear. I think this is why so many of the sales were conducted on board ship. For my part I am glad to hear a tale of such simple humanity.
‘For the freed slaves they now hold hiring fairs, as they did in the stableyard at David’s house when you were a child. Sometimes I think it is much the same. But at least the Negroes negotiate their own terms.
‘Here is your mother’s first drawing of our house. She has signed and dated this one. We had tiled floors and a handsome verandah circling the house on the first floor. There was always a sea breeze at Port Royal, so that the heat was never oppressive. We enjoyed the daily excitement when the ships came in. The dockyards are on the sheltered harbour side. You can see them clearly here, these wooden buildings, capped like pagodas. Most of the buildings are in the Spanish style, raised on stakes, with walls of wood. These resist earthquakes far better than the British-built brick buildings do. Earthquakes are terrifying, but what are they but old mother earth yawning and stretching out her bones. Did you read of the earthquake, soldier? No, the famous one that happened long before the Lisbon catastrophe. Port Royal used to be a wealthy place. Some of the ruined buildings are still there. Look, this is the graveyard. While I was a resident in Port Royal, I witnessed the pious burial of many of those unfortunate, unwilling travellers from the slave ships. Not only the slaves but convicts and dissenters from their own nations, are laid to rest here, outside Palisadoes Gate. This is the same graveyard which split apart in the earthquake of 1692, yielding up its dead somewhat before the appointed Resurrection Day. People still tell stories of that day. Here are your mother’s sketches of the graveyard. All the shattered and cracked stones date from that time. Look at this one. dieu sur tout. With the skull and crossbones beneath. It is the tombstone of Lewis Galdy, who survived the earthquake. And here on the other side she has copied the inscription.’
HERE LYES THE BODY OF
LEWIS GALDY
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT
PORT ROYAL
THE 22d DECEMBER 1739 AGED 80
HE WAS BORN AT MONTPELIER IN FRANCE BUT LEFT THAT COUNTRY FOR HIS RELIGION AND CAME TO SETTLE IN THIS ISLAND WHERE HE WAS SWALLOWED UP IN THE GREAT EARTH-QUAKE IN THE YEAR 1692 AND BY THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD WAS BY ANOTHER SHAKE THROWN INTO THE SEA AND MIRACULOUSLY SAVED BY SWIMMING UNTIL A BOAT TOOK HIM UP. HE LIVED MANY YEARS AFTER IN GREAT REPUTATION BELOVED BY ALL THAT KNEW HIM AND MUCH LAMENTED AT HIS DEATH
‘A curiosity, isn’t it? I smiled too when I saw her sketches. A strange history. Lewis Galdy’s life was remarkable not for his own efforts but for the miracle which preserved h
im. What will they write upon our graves, soldier? What will they say of our lives?
‘Mary Ann enjoyed the markets. We inherited two domestic servants. The passionate Immaculata, who assaulted the captain, and an indentured black called True Repose. She was on excellent terms with both of them because she was strict, but fair-minded. They marched off three times a week in a convoy of rippling baskets to the central market on High Street, which was the source of all our fruit, herbs and poultry. Mary Ann purchased a grotesque brace of live turtles and turned them into delicacies. The fish market was on the wharf near the wherry bridge. She always bought her fish from one man, whom she befriended, a giant freed slave. He never worked for whites again, but earned his living as a fisherman. No one knows how he purchased the boat. His two front teeth were missing and he whistled when he spoke. A peculiar mixture of Spanish and Creole. I couldn’t understand him, but she could. They stared at one another as if in recognition, and I thought that this was a silent form of haggling. And then she would choose fine crabs, great flat fish with a marline spike for a nose and lobsters moving slowly in a damp straw-lined crate. But only from this man, no matter how importunate the other piscadores became, pressing their wares upon her. True Repose was very frightened of the black fisherman and said that he was a maraboutier. If for some reason Mary Ann did not buy the fish, our boy went elsewhere.
‘Your mother knew what everything cost, soldier. She never overspent. Your mother was a canny, thrifty woman. It was a quality I always admired.
‘Our residence fronted the western end of Queen Street, and we had a handsome row of palms lining the walkway. Our salon faced away from the dockyards towards the public gardens and the fortress. There was a brick yard at the back, with the cookhouse, storerooms and access to a fine vaulted cellar, built after the earthquake with bricks from the old house. The wood warps and fades with the sea storms. We painted the façade every year in the calm, cooler weather before the spring rains.
‘There’s a well here to the left, with a pump behind it. We never used that water. In fact we had our water imported from the mineral springs at the Rock. But even then I took your advice and had it all boiled. Even for domestic purposes. But we drank fine wines from Maderia, which I bought from the importers at a good price. And Mary Ann enjoyed the punch I made. She could hold her liquor as well as any man. As well as you do. But of course she never touched a drop in public.
‘These are the red clay pipes which the local craftsmen made. Only two appear to have snapped during my voyage. Look at this geometric design, here, on the top of the stem, where it meets the bowl. This is typical of the West Indian pipes. All the Negroes use them. The whites still use the kaolin clay imports from Bristol. It’s a form of snobbery. The red ones are just as good. Here, I’ll make one up for you. And we can enjoy a tropical smoke together. Mary Ann used to joke with the rough women down by the fishing port. They sit, bare-footed and half-dressed, smoking pipes like these on their front steps, and shouting advice at anyone who passes by.
‘All the cooking was done outside. We imported wood and charcoal from the mainland. Mary Ann meddled with the cooks, but they grew to respect her. She rationed out all the meat and fish for the household and was never parted from her keys. But she learned to master the oven and the chimney. Her hands were sunburnt and hard by the end of the first year. She used to complain about that, but never gave up her policy of domestic interference. Salvatore soon spoke Creole as fluently as Spanish, and they both operated like unpaid spies on the yard workers.
‘Ah, Rupert! Did Mary Ann never tell you? No, Rupert was dead by then. We lost him on the voyage out. We were on board HMS Hercules. There was a good deal of sickness during the trip. He died from a screaming fever, which he had caught during our time in the Azores, and which returned some weeks later as we entered the tropics. I nursed him myself during the last days. I wouldn’t have Mary Ann in the cabin for fear of her health. How he clutched the crucifix in which he had no faith. I miss him still. He was not an old man. I could have expected to die before him. We buried him at sea. And despite the weights the body did not at once vanish. The thing floated, beautiful in the green Atlantic, and set sail, cresting the waves, carried on a fair wind, choosing its way back, back to the cold north. We watched him bobbing away, his shroud white against the grey waves. Then the feet pitched downwards and he sank down into the dark. We turned once more in the direction of the islands. Rupert turned back, taking the way we had already come.
‘Mary Ann wept many days for him. I am very surprised that she said nothing about it. I find that most odd.
‘Ah, that is not one of the drawings I can let you have, soldier. That one I must keep with me always. It is the outline of her stockinged left foot. Almost as small as yours. The cobbler at Port Royal was a young Portuguese man, originally a fine-tooled leather worker, fallen on hard times. She ordered some tough riding boots for her forays into the interior. There are snakes, not, on the whole, dangerous, but many insects and jiggers in the wet earth. She needed a strong pair of boots. In the hills we saw dozens of peenie-wallies, which is what they call the fireflies, shining numinous green in the dark. The Negroes in the kitchen yards collect them in glass jars and use them as lanterns. I remember the fireflies in the evenings, caught in the folds of her white shawls as she walked in the warm nights. We stayed here, in this house, The Heights, at Silver Hill. She has used watercolours for the ferns, but the house was sketched first, in ink. It was very plain inside. Polished hardwood floors, with scuttling cockroaches. The smell is repulsive if you have the misfortune to tread upon them. The beds were giant fourposters with moth-eaten drapes. The day of the great houses is already past. We saw mansions ruined, overgrown with vines and guinea grass, their slatted shutters grey and buckled, like driftwood parched and bleached by the damp heat and the great rains.
‘I was there to investigate the conditions of the slaves. Not only on my estates. It was very difficult to find blacks who were willing to talk to me. This was why we made numerous journeys into the interior. I found that the prospect of emancipation made little difference to the wretched conditions of these disinherited people. I found whole families living in insanitary huts on the brink of famine. Those whose old masters had been declared bankrupt were the most unfortunate. I was shown empty, derelict houses where the people had perished of starvation and disease. Sometimes they fled, looting the great houses for anything they could find, and lived, half savage, in the wastelands and smoking bushes. Sometimes their hovels were adorned with porcelain plates and candlesticks stolen from the plantation residences, but they had no candles and no food. Mary Ann was unable to draw the people who lived here, in this shack. They were too afraid to sit for her. And too ashamed.
‘Here is their church. See, the porch is neatly repaired, and the stone steps swept clean. I have rarely seen such courage and such faith among any people. A group of rebels formed on one of the Trelawney estates. I tried to make contact with them. They lived together like the early Christians, and held all things in common. They had decided to draw up a proclamation setting out their grievances, but none of them knew how to write. A people that cannot read and write can never be free. Eventually the rebels were tracked down, rounded up and shot. They had no weapons, only their sickles and hoes. The master’s tools are the only ones we can ever use to pull his house down. Sometimes I think that I should have been a schoolmaster, not a soldier, my dearest child. The most precious thing that I gave you was your education. All those hours that we spent together in the library. They are dear memories for me now. We were very happy then, were we not? The three of us, with Rupert and Salvatore robbing me blind downstairs. Sometimes you have a look of her. Just a hint of her beauty. You have the same pale skin, and ah, it hurts a little, even now, you have the same smile.
‘She gave up the parasols and hats when she took to going out fishing in the little boats, and her arms and nose were spangled with small brown freckles. Just like the ones you are
sporting now, soldier. I thought that she had never looked more beautiful.
‘She could swim, my dear. Your mother could swim. She wasn’t afraid of that eerie blue-green water, where you could see clear to the bottom. I don’t know what happened. No one will ever know. She went out early in the evening. I heard her voice below, in the yard. She left by the back door. I always looked out when I heard her voice. From the balcony I saw her hair and ribbons, jaunty as a ship in full trim, under way, taking the corner of Queen Street, avoiding the docks and going straight on past the fortress walls. She often went out alone. There was no danger. It was still bright at five-thirty, but the night hour was approaching. When she did not return at the usual time, I went out calling for her. Salvatore and True Repose came with me. I wasn’t alarmed. Even when we saw that the skiff was still missing. There was a fair breeze and a rocking sea, but the air was gentle and tender. It was a peaceful evening. I expected to see her, far out, her lines set, waving from the cradle of the sea. We went out among the cacti and the scrub grass along the inner arm of the Palisadoes spit, looking out at the steady waves, the brisk white tips, appearing, vanishing, again and again. We called and called along the shore, Mary Ann, Mary Ann. And there was nothing there, only the windswept sand against our boots and the last light, naked and red on the sloping stone walls and the bobbing masts.
James Miranda Barry Page 30