Shaking and sweating he eased himself into a sitting position. Gingerly, one by one, he managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed and placed his bare feet on the wooden floor. Christ, how the bed stank. The whole room was foetid as a prison cell. He stood up, tottered but had to sit down again to stop himself from falling over. Maybe if he crawled. Easing himself off the bed he slid onto his knees. Then, on all fours, he padded across the floor until he reached the top of the stairs.
They were very steep. Sweat was pouring from him. He felt it warm on the back of his neck and on his chest. He lay down and pressed his cheek onto the cool plank floor. He loved the smell of wood. Such a perfect smell. A perfume, telling of birds and forests and hidden glades. He and Sarah had sex against a tree once. He had taken her out to Manassas to Bull Run and they had done it there, in the woods, against a tree. She with her back to it and he entering her. God, she had been a wild woman. Why had this happiness been snatched from him?
Clutching the banister he pulled himself up onto his feet and one careful step at a time, made his way downstairs. He was halfway down when he lost his footing and in the split second of confused alarm which accompanied it, he lost hold of the banister.
If Roberto hadn’t been coming out of the darkroom at that exact moment, there was a good chance that Gilbert would have broken his neck. As it was, Roberto saw him starting to tumble and ran up the stairs. Gilbert’s momentum pushed the stocky Italian back several steps and it was a miracle that they both didn’t end up rolling back down. In the end however, Gilbert found himself in a ball pressed against the Italian’s legs while Roberto strained to hold onto the banister and the banister in turn, creaked and groaned under the pressure.
‘Jesus a Christ, boss, what you trying to do?’ gasped Roberto. ‘Come on, I ’elp you down.’
Slowly, with much puffing and grunting, Roberto moved back carefully a step at a time. Gilbert, who was essentially upside down, wasn’t able to right himself, but with Roberto holding on to him, he contrived to roll slowly to the bottom of the stairs. There, finally, he stood up to find himself looking into the Italian’s face with its quizzical expression.
‘I needed to go to the toilet,’ said Gilbert.
He sounded like a child.
‘Smells like you already did,’ said Roberto.
‘I need to get some water,’ said Gilbert.
‘Okay boss, you know the way. In the darkroom.’
The door to the darkroom was opposite the foot of the stairs. Gilbert opened it and went in. The red safe lamp was on. Roberto must be developing pictures. Gilbert rinsed a glass beaker used for developing, filled it with water from the faucet and downed it. He refilled it and this time took a shorter drink. He glanced around. All of this had been so familiar to him once. He had such good memories of the work he had done here; such pride in what he did. But what did it matter now? He downed the rest of the beaker, refilled it and began to head for the door when he noticed the photographs on the work bench.
There were four of them. The first one had a girl in it. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and stood gazing into the camera. She wore a wrap but apart from that she was naked. The wrap was pulled down off her shoulders and hung open exposing her breasts.
Puzzled, Gilbert’s eyes moved to the next picture. It was the same girl. This time she stood with her back to the camera, bending forward so that her backside was cocked in the air and her breasts hung down. She was there again in the third picture, standing in front of a cheval glass. Gilbert recognized it – Sarah had bought it for him for the studio so that customers, especially women, could inspect themselves in it before he took their pictures. The young girl in the photograph was inspecting herself alright. She wore shoes, stockings and a string of pearls. The picture was of both her and her full-frontal reflection. In the final picture, the girl sat back in a chair, her legs apart, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Still carrying his beaker of water, Gilbert went out of the darkroom.
‘Leonardo,’ he called.
He went round to the portrait area. He was just in time to catch Roberto pulling back a black curtain which shielded the area from the front window and the street. Sunlight blazed in.
‘Scuse me, boss,’ said Roberto as he ran to the camera and ducked his head under the black cloth.
But Gilbert hardly heard him. Instead he stared at what Roberto was photographing.
A girl – the same one who was in the photographs in the darkroom – sat sideways on a chair with one arm resting along its wicker back. Her leg nearest the camera was raised and its calf rested on the thigh of her other leg. Apart from black stockings, ankle boots, a string of pearls and a broad-brimmed hat, she was naked. She cupped one breast in the palm of her hand and contemplated it with an expression that was a mixture of tenderness and longing.
‘Okay Clara, last one,’ said Roberto. ‘Hold it.’
The girl held the pose; Roberto removed the lens cap and took the picture.
‘You can relax, Clara,’ he said, after a few seconds.
Swiftly he ran to the curtain and drew it back into place so that the view from the street was gone. Clara looked up at Gilbert from under the hat and smiled. She was very pretty with brown hair and very red lips.
‘What in heaven’s name are you doing?’ asked Gilbert.
‘Great, thanks sweetheart. You’ve been great,’ said Roberto.
Gilbert thought that Roberto had almost sounded American that time. Roberto took a wad of money from his pocket, peeled off a couple of bills and gave them to her. Clara stood up revealing a small triangle of brown hair at her groin. Her figure was quite perfect. Gilbert felt a sudden dart of arousal that was immediately replaced by a picture of Sarah in stockings and boots.
‘Thanks, Roberto,’ she said. ‘Any time.’
Clara took a light blue wrap from the back of the chair and pulled it around herself. There were brightly colored Chinese dragons in red on it. She kissed Roberto lightly on the cheek, stepped past Gilbert saying, ‘scuse me’ and disappeared behind the portrait area.
‘I’m gonna be a few hours, boss. Got copies to make and people to see. Maybe you should go back to bed and I’ll talk to you later.’
‘Sure,’ said Gilbert meekly.
5
Leroy Carpenter hated women and for this reason he sought their company.
He was short and skinny with thin hair, bad skin and teeth like tombstones in an old graveyard. He rarely shaved but the effect wasn’t so much a beard as a face that looked like it hadn’t been washed. Which it probably hadn’t – Leroy never washed if he could avoid it. His eyes were deep-set, almost sunken and his face knew only four expressions – mean, suspicious, sullen and angry. Before his father had run off with another woman he had dismissively referred to Leroy as ‘that runt’. In the tavern his father frequented someone had joked one night that Leroy ‘looked like he must have been strained through a silk handkerchief’ when he was conceived. Rather than taking offence and hitting the other man, his father had found the notion hilarious.
Leroy had married when he was sixteen. Six months later his then pregnant wife had left him. ‘I may be dumber ‘n a bag of hammers,’ she would often say to her family, especially if she had drunk too much. ‘But if I’ve done one smart thing in my life, it was to leave that sonofabitch.’ As far as Leroy was concerned, he had thrown her out. She was further proof – not that he needed it – that there were only a few things that women were good for.
After that he drifted for a couple of years picking up odd bits of work here and there. Finally, luck smiled on him. Along the south bank of the James River in search of work he came upon a plantation whose overseer, Alexander Ames had a different attitude to hiring. ‘Hire winners’ was a piece of worldly wisdom that was widely accepted. Ames on the other hand, went out of his way to hire losers. His rationale was unimpeachable – he couldn’t see why other overseers couldn’t see it too. Winners had nothing to wo
rk for – they had already arrived. Losers, on the other hand, had everything to work for – and more often than not, they did.
Ames saw in Leroy a man who, given the right set of conditions, would do anything to make himself succeed – and Ames could provide those conditions. The plantation was vast. The owner rarely came to visit, Leroy mightn’t see Ames for days on end and so he would end up running his own small empire. With an aggressive target on the one hand, but the power to do whatever he wanted on the other, Ames was sure that a man like Leroy would blossom.
And he had. Leroy was made one of the plantation’s assistant overseers though Leroy preferred to think of it as ‘Deputy Overseer’ – thought it had a better ring to it. Leroy had his own horse and a cabin in which to live. Apart from providing a job, Ames – unbeknown to himself – also provided Leroy with another of his needs – a man he could look up to. Ames was a fat, warm man who never got angry. When, as sometimes happened, one of his choices didn’t work out and had to be fired, there was no shouting, no scene, no high emotion. Ames would merely explain to the man how ‘disappointed’ he was and that would be it. Whatever else happened, Leroy didn’t ever want to hear that word from Ames’ lips.
Here, in his own private fiefdom, Leroy worked his slaves hard to achieve their targets. He was also free to indulge in his hatred of women. He knew he would probably never get a chance to carry out some of the fantasies he had. After all slaves were valuable property – and they weren’t his property – at least, not yet. But he still had plenty of latitude – stripping, whipping, fondling breasts, inserting fingers. He found favorite slaves and favorite places where he could carry out these things. He had no real interest in conventional sex – not when he could do things like this.
At first, when the War came, Leroy reckoned it had nothing to do with him. Life just carried on as normal on the plantation. But when the War wasn’t over and the Yankees licked in a few months as everybody had expected, and then when it began to drag on towards a second winter, then things began to change. One day, out of the blue, Ames appeared and asked Leroy if he felt that any of the niggers would make good nigger drivers. Taken completely by surprise and not being fast enough to think on his feet, Leroy suggested one and then a second one.
After that it wasn’t long before these men were promoted. Ames too, began to take a more active interest in what was happening and Leroy found he was left to himself a lot less than he had been. Finally, one day – and again Leroy didn’t see it coming until it was on top of him – Ames asked him if he’d thought of enlisting.
The thought scared Leroy witless. It was one thing to have to tame a bunch of sullen, rebellious niggers. But Leroy had heard the accounts of Sharpsburg. To have to advance across open ground against a blazing wall of Yankee muskets, or under Yankee artillery fire, or to face Yankee bayonets – that was a whole other thing.
‘You wouldn’t be able to manage around here,’ Leroy answered nervously.
‘Oh, I think we would,’ said Ames. ‘Anyway, what’s more important now is that the Confederacy is saved.’
Leroy managed to delay another week or two. Then one day, Ames showed up and said bluntly, ‘I really think you ought to enlist, Leroy. I don’t know why you’re stallin’ but your country needs you. If it’s your job, don’t you worry ‘bout that. When it’s all over you come back here and there’ll be a job waitin’ for you’. I’ll be mighty disappointed if I don’t see you in uniform in the next day or two.’
At that moment at least, Leroy’s fear of disappointing Ames was greater than his fear of the Yankees. He enlisted and was in time to find himself behind the stone wall on Marye’s Heights at the Second Battle of Fredericksburg. Everyone knew what had happened the previous December at the first battle. Confederate infantry behind the stone wall had massacred thousands of Union soldiers as they tried in repeated charges to take the position. Despite the fact that this time only a thin Confederate line held the wall, it looked for a while like history would repeat itself. The Union charge stalled but then somehow Union soldiers got round on the left and began enfilade fire down the Rebel line. That had been followed by a bayonet charge. Leroy had always been terrified of the long thin steel blades and had been one of the first to break. It was his one experience of combat. It was not something he wanted to repeat.
In June Leroy found himself heading north across the Potomac as Lee began his second invasion of the North. There was talk of one more big battle to end the War. Each day, as they marched and Leroy pictured the Yankees drawing nearer, he became more and more fearful. He wondered if today would be the day they would encounter the lines of men in blue with their blazing muskets and evil bayonets. And then on Midsummer’s Day, he met John Hays.
John Hays could not have been described as a handsome man. He had a head that looked like a very large cannon ball with a small face embedded in one side of it and a cap perched ridiculously on top. His face had thick, floppy jowls and a huge wad of flesh under the chin. The eyes, instead of being level, were angled slightly downwards at the outside. So too were the bags under the eyes, the lines that ran from each side of the nose and the sides of the mouth. The man looked like he never smiled or even knew how to.
Apart from the cannonball head, the other thing that struck Leroy about Hays was how fat he was. Unlike when he had worked on the plantation and eaten well, in the army, Leroy was permanently hungry. Indeed part of the reason Lee was invading Pennsylvania was for its food supplies. Leroy had lost weight in the army and had to pull in his belt several times. Most of his fellow soldiers suffered similarly. Leroy couldn’t understand how Hays had such a large girth.
Hays was part of a new draft brought into the regiment to make up the Fredericksburg losses. Leroy found himself beside Hays one day as they were marching. It was hot with a blue sky and a white, merciless sun. By then Leroy had gotten used to the long dusty marches with little water and an empty belly. He could see, however, that Hays was suffering.
‘I’ll be damned if I’m gonna do much more of this here marchin’,’ muttered Hays to no one in particular.
He was older than Leroy and once again, he felt drawn to Hays just as he had been to Ames on the plantation.
‘What did you have in mind?’ Leroy asked. ‘Gonna borrow Gen’l Lee’s horse?’
‘Somethin’ like that,’ said Hays.
Then it was as though the older man noticed Leroy for the first time.
‘You look like a smart kid,’ said Hays.
It was the first time anyone had ever said anything like that to Leroy.
‘Ever thought of going into business for yourself?’
‘Yeah, often,’ said Leroy.
It was true that he had. He had often pictured himself as a landowner with slaves of his own. But he had never been able to see how he could make the jump from where he was to where he wanted to be. He tried to save some of his wages but, somehow or other, the money always seemed to slip through his fingers.
‘But you need money to get started,’ said Leroy. ‘That’s the problem.’
‘That ain’t no problem, kid,’ said Hays.
‘What you gonna do?’ asked Leroy, laughing. ‘Rob a bank?’
‘Don’t have to,’ said Hays expressionlessly. ‘There’s money walkin’ around here on two legs. We just gotta find it.’
‘And how you gonna do that?’ asked Leroy, mystified.
‘Niggers, kid. Niggers. There’s plenty of niggers up North here. Lot of ‘em’s escaped slaves. We just need to find a few and take ’em back home.’
‘But we’re in the army,’ said Leroy.
‘Kid, look – what’s this war all about? Bein’ fought so that we Southerners can keep slaves, right?’
Leroy agreed that it was.
‘So some men are gonna fight for that right, other men gonna take niggers back to the South where they belong. We’ll all be doin’ our bit in the bigger picture.’
They deserted a couple of days later. Heading eas
t into prosperous looking territory where the war or the armies hadn’t yet reached, they terrorized a family and took two horses, a revolver, plenty of rope and saddlebags packed full of food. They found their first black man a couple of days later. He was working in a field and tried to make a run for it when he saw them, but he was no match for the horses. Within a week they had a coffle of seven black males, hands tied behind their backs and a length of rope with a series of nooses on it, linking one neck to the next.
In order to reduce the possibility of running into Union cavalry – or indeed their own – Hays and Leroy stuck to back roads. It was the morning of the second of July when they came along a dusty track through a woodlot and happened upon a small wooden cabin on one side of the road. The single story building was surrounded by a low, recently painted white fence. Neat rows of vegetables grew on the ground in front of the cabin. Out back they could see young fruit trees. The front door and both windows were open against the stifling heat. Birds twittered in the surrounding trees and the air was alive with the sleepy sound of crickets. They reined in their horses and the line of black men shuffled to a halt. Hays shouted ‘Anybody home?’
A woman came out through the door wiping her hands on a long white apron. Her hair was tied up in a headscarf. Leroy was struck by how pretty she was – and how black. She had just begun to smile when she saw the gray uniforms. The smile turned to terror. She turned, ran inside and slammed the door. With a speed that took Leroy by surprise, Hays was off the horse and had bounded up the steps of the cabin to its little veranda. The woman had locked the door but Hays threw his considerable weight against it and it gave way on the first attempt.
Then, instead of rushing in, Hays stepped to one side of the door. As he did so, there were two flashes inside the house and two gunshots in rapid succession. Birds screeched and scattered from the trees. Then Hays spun round the doorpost and into the house. There was a slap and a gasp of pain; then a second slap and the heavy sound of the gun landing on the floor. The woman began a sort of wet screaming – part cry of pain, part crying – and then they emerged onto the veranda. The woman’s headscarf had fallen off and Hays dragged her by the hair.
Sunlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 2) Page 3