by Chris Dolan
She was strict with me – understanding that the Child is the apprenticeship for the Man. In my Father’s company I mirthed & played more than was good for me but with her I remained stony of expression & conduct which earned me some compliments from her. As I grew up she despaired of me, detecting traits of my Father’s character. I played with any other boy & was a leader of them all whether Christian or slave or of colour. My mother was of the opinion that I should ensure they retained a respectfull distance as one day I was to lead them in more than childish games.
Her husband took to drinking his own bush rum which caused as much disharmony between he & my mother as did his taking of a mistress. It occurs to me now that she was relieved to be rid of his rude attentions. To be free of him can be the only reason she did not cause more of an uproar than she did over Nancy – his fancy woman & slave.
It was well known that many men used these lesser mortals to expunge their baser desires but few were so open about the matter as my reckless father. James freely courted the woman in society. & a great black buxom blunderbuss of a woman was Nancy! Favoured – I’ll grant – in the light of her eye & the whoop of her laugh & the shape of her succulent rear & paps even at nigh on forty. Before I learned of her unholy partnership with my father I had fair adored the besom. She turned the dreary house into a carnival & she japed & jested with me. So it is not her I blame for the calamity but James who preyed upon her guiltless inferiority. But his greatest sin – & one that smote me to the spirit – was yet to come.
He had a son of her. In one stroke he mixed blood that should not be mixed. He made an open harlot of poor Nancy & a rejected woman of my mother. & he cheated me of my ancestral rights. Had he sold the chile to a neighbour’s plantation – in the antique & accepted style – my mother & I would not have suffered as we did. But his need for the delusion of affection made him think he loved Nancy & her bastard son more than he did my mother or me.
This was the cause of my mother’s demise & the prompting of my own rowdiness. I had just joined the Militia – the bastard Negro boy arrived in my fourteenth year – & I took my duties seriously. Yet within a year or two I was finding consolation in the cup & the jug. My mother for her part rather than rankle of affrontery had the gumption to drop dead. She did it one morning with her usual competence & lack of fuss dressed in her Sunday best right in the room where her body would be laid out.
Thereafter I took delight more in drinking & carousing with my fellows & saw my imbibing as a means of watering my mother’s grave with ruefull tears. My Father could not complain of my Rudeness & Mischief as he himself was seldom sober in his advancing years.
He had come to be a critic of the Militia – fallen as he had into the sphere of influence of Nancy who it must be said was clever. Quoth he: “The Militia is nae more than the defender of the rich planters, Robbie.”
He had taken to addressing me in the Scotch style & using other words of that land – two generations removed from him – about the same time as he had taken up with Nancy. It was part of his deterioration under the black whore. He reminisced of his own father & the earlier Robert the Jacobite. He dreamed of “guddling trouts” in broad rivers & traipsing through gloaming with lassies. There’s no fool like an old fool, as my mother used to say and – though it shames me to scribe it – he wasted his talents on rum & injudicious talk & riding his Nancy like she were a thoroughbred mare.
As to his mistrust of the Aristocracy of this colony I shared his opinion in certain measure – they cared nothing for hardworking farmers & failed to discriminate between us & Negroes. “Your Yeomanry Robbie would spend its time better defending the people they were weaned with & not wasting their time guarding the fields of those who despise us.” He was deep impressed with the philosophie of the babbling French. “There is not a man jack of us who would be welcome at the table of a Combermere or a Bell though the latter be our ain kin.”
Ain kin! Never was a man so insensible to his “ain kin”! Had he not thrown over his own wife – as Christian & white as the Saviour’s robe – in favour of a heathen African woman? My Father’s newfound devotion to kinfolk was naught more than Romanticisation. As much as he employed words of the old country he prattled in the gibberish of the Dark Continent. Among his “guddling” & “Robbie” & his “muckles” & “pickles” he gaily spoke of “unna” which is the grunt Nancy used when she meant “you, sir” & he shouted out “Bashment!” & “Rassole!” so that no educated person could make head nor tail of him.
My Father misunderstood the Struggle of his day. The Nobility had for many years betrayed us – manumitting slaves & giving them more land than we had – thus devaluing our industry. We were squeezed from above & below & black fellows who had tasted the crack of the whip comported themselves & dressed as though they were our betters. In years to come I would understand how melancholy a sight it was to see an African dressed as a London dandy. My father could not comprehend my argument that an alliance with the poor dumb slave was a worser kind of moonshine than trusting in the Landowners.
I left my father’s house at the age of seventeen meaning to return to it only when he had passed away & the land was mine. To pay him his due he did not injure me more by delaying much in perishing – only six years after the loss of my mother – when I was at nineteen years of age. Tippling at a rumshop frequented by the basest of fellows he got himself into a Discussion & the knife of a yeoman ended up in his pickled breast.
But returning to our acres for his burial I was dealt an even greater blow – one that altered my life for ever. My Father – I learned – had not bequeathed our land to me – his only son – but to his African mongrel bastard. He had made a cock-laird out of the pickaninnie & a familial cuckold of me.
The news was delivered to me as bold as you like by none other than Nancy herself. & at the funeral of my own father! She had the effrontery to be in tears & to put her arm around my shoulder & thought herself gallant in telling me it was her intention to act as a parent towards me.
A parent – Nancy! She continued that – although the deeds to my property were now in her misceginated bastard boy’s hands – if I came home I could regard the house & acreage as mine own & even tell others that that was the case to absolve me from any shame. She declared that she was content to return to her old chattel-house & that the larger of the two domains would remain to all extents & outward view my own. Even now I have not the words to express the fury that enveloped me.
Naturally I did not let the matter rest there. I at once made my way to the great Plantation House of which my father was a tenant. The squire of that land – Mr. Yorke – had a great good deal of sympathy for my plight & felt certain that my legacy would be justly restored.
For many years there had raged a debate in our country as to how much land a Negro or man of colour – the ill-begotten results of farmers & their brainless concubines – could own – if any he could own at all – & to what degree he could protect that land. My Militia friends assured me that if Courts could not settle my case sensibly & that if Nancy & her bastard child should need to be killed, I should rely upon their help. But another Law had been passed that made the Killing of a Negro a crime.
Thus I had to place my trust in Mr. Yorke & the unscientific & sophistical ways of the Courts over the return of my propertie. Months – & eventually years – went by & I wasted time conferring with big-wigged & small-spirited solicitors & juriconsults who were satisfied that nothing could be done. A few scant acres of Irish Jacobite land – as English Magistrates in their wisdom perceived my inheritance – was of little interest. Moreover my unchancy father – it seemed – knew his jurisdiction better than he did his black strumpet’s cunt. (Perhaps if I am granted liberal retirement I will polish this text. For the moment I will write as my hand directs.)
I met the mulatto who was the offspring of my Father one night while walking out from a Militia meeting. It shocked me to see him – for he was like an hourglass come to life. T
hat bawling suckling had grown legs & arms & – though he could not have been more than twelve years of age – a grinning insult to me & reminder of years wasted – he strutted & swore already as his kind are wont to do til the end of their days. As is the temperament of his Race he waited until my comrades had gone some way off before approaching in order to inform me that he refuted his mother’s promises & that I was not welcome in my own home nor ever again would be.
Nancy had informed me that should the Law find in my favour she would bow to it. Yet all the while she was slyly engaging solicitors of her own & of that kind who succumb to Wilberforce’s lunatic way of thinking. Her brat had heard that I had talked with some comrades of applying the Law directly & Hanging him as he Deserved. It seems he was not content with this arrangement & told me so all the while waggling a blade at me.
I had seen – at Mr. Barclays plantation – sensible & civilised castigations that corrected unacceptable behaviour - & could I have done so I would have proscribed & enacted one now. Lashings & starvations & incarcerations have their place but I was never a man – nor ne’er became one – who deals punishment greater than is required. Mr. Barclay employed one particular lenient penalty – a preferred approach in the prime years of mastership – that impressed me. Could I have enacted it now – stopped up the muck spouting from the cretins mouth & replaced it with muck of my own – could I have seized him & prised open his bulbous lips & shited in his throat as I had seen done to good effect – I would have done so. But that is a task for two or more men.
I had a rifle on my shoulder but it was not loaded. There was nothing I could do. I did not run. I turned my back on the mongrel popgun – no brother of mine – black as he was as the Earl o’ Hell.
For several days & nights I kept to my lodgings at Bridgetown, boiling in my own anger & shame, not even attending drill. Subsequently I was refused promotion to Captain though the title had run three generations in our family. I drank for various days & then ceased. Once the anger had gone a little out of me I read my Bible & some books & papers that had been loaned to me concerning the New Jerusalem. Amongst them was a tome of Scientific work by one Alexander Kinmont. A countryman of my ancestors, this great Philosopher understood the Biology of the races & it was a wonder to me to see in print many ideas of which I had experienced the reality.
In this new light I reconsidered my whole life – & saw that the land I had been cheated of was in any case worthless. Even if I were to spend the greater part of my time & mental energy on regaining what was mine it would never provide me with a satisfactory income – so degraded had it become under my Father’s rule. Nor could such a life meet my restless Nature & intelligence.
Land had been the undoing of our Pedigree – making those that had it greedy & those without it debased. Custodianship of crop is not the only way to serve the Lord. I became sensitive to the divisions in this Colony that others could not & still cannot see.
Reading the Book of Kinmont I mark as the Birth and Baptism of my own Great Work. I enlisted myself in the twin camps of Gods footsoldiers – no greater rank do I claim – & Human Science. My labours beckon me. There is little time for reflection & composing when there is so much of Importance & Urgency to be done. The lessons taught me by Mr. Barclay will have to wait for another night. As will the Revelation granted unto me by an unsuspecting lady. Poor flibbertigibbet! How could she possibly comprehend that she has been used as a vessel to convey a message from powers beyond her ken! From the moment I cast eyes on her – half dead half blind & crazed she was – I knew the girl to be marked out – & paid special Attention to her.
VI
The glorious era of Bridgetown and the Lyceum had lasted scarcely a month. Everything had changed, but not quite enough. She had been a common kail-worm until the New World became her chrysalis. But before she could emerge with full-grown wings, ready to climb and soar, the pupa had been blown off the branch, halting her metamorphosis. A full year later she could only still wonder what kind of butterfly she was destined to become. Whether a swallowtail, or an admiral, or even a painted lady. Any would do, rather than remained imprisoned in her cocoon.
It was as if time were a mysterious fabric that could shrink or expand itself according to some unknown law. No matter how Elspeth, trapped inside, semi-formed, kicked and struggled against it, time thrust her forward, then yanked her back. In Northpoint the fabric was being stretched beyond endurance.
Of the journey from Bridgetown, she could remember little. Strangers as dazed as she had given her fare to eat – as to what kind, her memory failed – and water to drink. But she remembered, perfectly lucidly, reaching the estate of Lord Coak. There was a gate. A pathway curled back from it, like a childhood memory. An unclear expectation arose with each bend but, in the end, nothing was revealed. Just another unkempt track, leading to a plantation house like others she had seen in and around town.
Lord Coak’s house was built of the brightest Barbadian coral stone, gleaming like a pearl against the wild woods that lapped against it. It looked like it had been thrown up, perfectly formed, by some movement in the earth’s surface. A man was waiting on the porch, as though Elspeth had been expected. She walked towards him, roots bulging under her feet, thick foliage of grapefruit trees and akkie bushes forking out, scratching her face. The heat was intense and wet, like a botanical glasshouse. She imagined that if she stood still long enough the vegetation would burgeon before her eyes and bury both the house and the man. She stumbled as she approached him. He caught her, steadied her, then let go and walked away, disappearing inside the house. She managed to follow him in. Inside, large winged beetles lumbered from room to room as if looking for something they had mislaid. She found the stranger sitting in the largest chamber, in a broad band of sunlight, two glasses and a jar in front of him.
“Yuh must be Baillie.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir.”
Then an elderly black woman appeared, just in time to catch Elspeth before she fell.
It took her several weeks to recover from the arduousness of her journey and the shock of the storm. She was in a bed, in a spacious room, sparsely furnished. She knew that she had been visited regularly: her water was changed, her face washed. Faint memories of her head being held and a woman’s voice encouraging her to drink. After some time – God knows how much – she became alert enough to identify the old black lady who had caught her on her arrival. Once she managed to sit up and throw her legs over the side of the bed, she saw out the window: a bluff rose up steeply and on its far side was a pleasant little cove.
“How long since I arrived here?”
“Be a while now.”
“This is Lord Coak’s estate, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Annie Oyo. Not that you’re in need o’ a second name. I answer to Annie.”
At times, especially in the darkness, when the woodwork creaked or some sound crept in through her window, she felt again the hammering of the storm and had to find her chamber pot to vomit from fear and disgust. If a male voice from elsewhere in the house – perhaps the man who had been waiting for her at the porch, and of whom she had seen nothing since – reached her ears, her heart rose in joy, thinking it was George. Then she would fall into sweaty slumber again, seeing nothing but dark, shifting colours.
When she felt well enough to venture into the world beyond her chamber, she instructed Annie to dress her and take her to her master.
“Lord Coak has not returned yet, has he?”
Annie shook her head.
“Then I will speak to – forgive me, I have forgotten the name of the gentleman.”
“Cap’n Shaw.”
Annie helped her down the polished wooden stairs of a house perhaps smaller but nearly as impressive as the Overtons’. Walking for the first time since her arrival, she found she had developed a stabbing pain somewhere unidentifiable deep in her torso.
; “You are feeling improved now, I hope?”
Shaw was so tall and thin he appeared to walk on stilts. She recognised him now as the man who had visited Lord Coak at the Overtons’ the night of Elspeth’s arrival in the Colony. He might have been made entirely out of wood: the stiff, jerky stride of his legs as he walked towards her and a face streaked with ginger hairs that seemed to be carved onto his cheeks combined to make him look like a puppet controlled by invisible strings. He was dressed for work: a white open-necked shirt and fustian breeks, both garments earth-soiled.
“You must forgive me for imposing on your kindness like this.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Thank heaven his lordship made mention of me, otherwise you might have turned me out into the wild. I must have looked like a vagabond.”
“I am unsusceptible to the facade of dress, Miss Baillie.”
“When will Lord Albert be home?”
She had never referred to Coak by his first name before, not even with the title attached to it. But this “Captain” clearly had some position of authority here, so it was important that she show him she had a measure of influence.
“I don’t expect him before a month.”
“A month!”
Shaw sat and observed as she feared for a moment that she might faint again in front of him. “I promise I shall not trouble you as long as a month,” she managed to say. “In a day or two I should be well enough to travel back to town – if some transport could be arranged for me.”
“You shall be staying here, I fear, Miss.”
He looked at her coolly. There was that hint of lust that most men tried and failed to hide, and Elspeth recognised Shaw’s particular strain of it: more concealed from himself than from her and tinged with acrimony. “The city is in a state of chaos. There is disease, lootings, all manner of tribulations that would not befit a young woman. I have written to his lordship and informed him of your arrival here, but dispatches to Havana are slow. I must insist that you wait here until his return.”