The Long Song by Andrea Levy
If the court can recall, several hundred negroes surrounded the prison house to demand release of five or six of the squatters, or settlers, as they insisted they were, who had been charged with trespass and were arrested when the police tried to evict them. The crowd of negroes were singing and making threats that they will see Jamaica become another San Domingo and run all white men from the island. Eventually, in order to free the prisoners, this mob attacked the gaol burning it to the ground.
Very bad business indeed, very bad. But most of the negroes were caught and justice was dealt with a firm hand, as I’m sure the court can recall. This one said she had nothing to do with it but the attorney was never sure—says she’s more crafty than most.
How many of them are still living there? Well, less now, as I understand. Many died from sickness—yellow fever mostly. They have been left pretty much alone for several years. And the land there is now very poor, evidently. It hardly yields anything—the odd yellowing banana perhaps—which is why some of them have succumbed of late to starvation. There is still work for them upon the plantation if they will do it, the attorney says. But these negroes, as always, seem to fear that slavery is being brought back; that this island will be sold to the Americas and they will then find themselves again slaves . . . and so on and so on; arguments this court has had to hear too often as justification for wrongdoing. And this one, the accused, who calls herself only July, has never, ever been willing to work.
‘Are you willing to work?’
What, what? She still cannot hear him.
‘Can you hear me? Can she hear me?’
‘Do you hear him?’
What?
‘Oh, never mind. Carry on. Let’s get to the charge against her. It’s so very hot.’
And Constable Campbell is brought forth to stand within the courtroom. Skinny as a broom with a skin pockmarked as a breadfruit. The accused—and now a white bony finger does point across the room to July—was lying down at the side of the path that runs from town to Unity Pen. He thought her dead, for she was not moving. She was covered with a filthy old shawl. So he kicked her. And he was quite surprised when she began to stir. She yelled several unrepeatable cuss words upon him. He asked her what she was doing. She said that he should mind his business. He repeated the question and this time she replied that she was on her way to market. But it was a very late hour for her to be going to market and she was told so.
Thinking something suspicious about her, the constable asked her to get up from the ground. It was as she was telling him in no uncertain terms to go away, that a fowl was heard clucking underneath her shawl. The constable, at once seeing a bird caught and flapping within her garment, asked her where she got this hen from. The negro replied that she had raised it. When asked to produce the bird from under her shawl so that the constable might inspect it, the accused ran off. By the time the constable had caught up with her, she had no hen under her clothes. She had proceeded to berate the constable—in some of the foulest language the constable had ever had to endure—for making her lose her only chicken. She was then arrested for stealing.
‘Did you steal the chicken?’
‘No, massa, me did raise it.’
‘What did she say? Was it your chicken?’
‘Yes, massa, me did raise it, then me did lose it.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said, my lord, that she raised the chicken.’
‘Yes, but where did she get it?’
‘Someone ’pon Allen Pen did give me to raise.’
‘What is she saying?’
‘Something about Allen Pen. I think she’s saying that somebody gave her the fowl to raise.’
‘Yes, but are you speaking the truth? Ask her if she is speaking the truth.’
‘Me place me hand upon the book and Lord strike me down if me not speak true.’
‘What is she saying?’
‘She wishes to place her hand upon the Bible to show she is speaking the truth.’
‘Was the hen eventually found?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘Has anyone complained that they are missing a hen?’
‘Not up to now, my lord.’
‘Has she been in front of us before?’
‘Umm, no, no, it does not seem so. I believe this is her first time within a court, my lord.’
‘Oh, then let her go. This really is too flimsy a case for jury to hear. Let us get on—it is far too hot.’
Once the judge-man had struck his gavel down so our July might be led out and his next case conducted in, a little commotion began to stir within this hot-hot courtroom. For a man stood up from within the seats upon which the jury sat. But this was not a white man. No. Not a mulatto. Not a quadroon, nor a mustee, and certainly not a mustiphino. It was a negro; a nigger; a black man that stood. A black man raised himself from out the jury. And his voice, as he requested leave to approach the judges’ bench, ran about the courtroom genteel and refined as any Englishman.
‘Most irregular, most irregular,’ came spluttering from the lips of all the white men within this room.
Come, July would not be led from her box—she did cling tighter to its walls for she wished to view this spectacle; a nigger thrown from the court for impersonating a gentleman. For sitting in quiet deceit amid a jury! Stealing a hen—what a puny crime when this tricky man was breathing amongst them. Let her see them chasing him around. The bewigged fat man blundering and puffing within this hunt to grab the nigger-rogue by his toe. The skinny Constable Campbell leaping over chair and table to seize this crafty puff-up black man, shouting, ‘Hold up there, hold up there,’ just like he pitiful commanded when pursuing her. The judge rising to yell, ‘A nigger is escaped in my courtroom. Catch him, catch him. I will see him hanged!’ Someone will surely arrive to fire a whip upon this cunning negro’s back. Oh, what a fuss-fuss must soon arise!
But this black man was not chased, nor grabbed; no chairs or tables were overturned in his pursuit and no whip was cracked. Approaching the bench with an upright gait, this negro man, with his hands waving gracefully to aid in the reasoning of his enquiry, spoke in a whisper to the judge. True—the judge did lean back a little, his eyebrows raised, as the negro breathed words upon him. But this judge did not command him to be caught and hanged. No. Soon he leaned over to consult his clerk upon this black man’s quandary. Eventually the judge shrugged, a you-have-my-permission-to-do-as-you-please-gesture upon the negro, who graciously bowed his head to him.
There was no fuss-fuss at all.
‘But what of me hen? The constable did make me lose it,’ July asked loudly as she was led from the court by the scaly-head man. Come, she had repeated that lie so often she now believed it to be true. But once she was outside and under the hot-hot sun, the constable merely shooed her saying, ‘Be off with you and be thankful you’re not in shackles. Go on, be off with you.’
Once July had amassed saliva enough to spit upon this man’s departing back, she dropped to sit weary upon the ground. How long would she be permitted to rest before some constable or busybody did think to move her? Could she gather her spirit to tread those stony miles back? And which way must this miserable trek to the rough, unlevel spent lands near the plantation that was once named Amity begin? As she considered whether this way up the street or that way down it, would make the right place to start, two shiny black leather shoes stepped to stand before her.
‘Are you July of Amity?’ an English voice said.
July made no reply but that of a sigh. For she was thinking of the heave she must make to see herself lifted from the ground.
‘I know who you are—I have just come from the court,’ this English voice carried on.
She had not will enough to cuss, ‘So why you bother asking me, nah? Cha!’ for even thinking it, tired her. She just stared upon the black polished shoes, then up the grey trousers to the matching cutaway jacket, over the stiff collar of the white shirt with its knotted scarlet silk tie,
‘Are you July?’ this man again said, ‘once a slave, a house slave at Amity? Your mistress was Caroline Mortimer?’
‘No,’ said she, ‘Not me.’ For there was such certainty within the tone of his questioning that she was sure this answer would find least trouble for her.
But the man tipped his head upon her and said, ‘But I believe you are.’ Just that. Two times he said it, before leaning down to assist her so she might rise from the ground. ‘I believe you are.’ As this man touched July’s arm, she shooed him from it. But without sign of misgiving, the man raised his hat to her and said, ‘My name is Thomas Kinsman. Do you know me?’
Perhaps if his face had creased to yell like a mewling baby, she may have known him. Perhaps if he had talked to her of a moonless night, a stony trail and a red kerchief tied at a pickney’s head, she would have begun to think him familiar. Perhaps if he had conjured an ill-begotten black pickaninny abandoned upon a stone, and talked of a Baptist manse, of James Kinsman and of his good-goodly wife Jane, her memory would have been roused. And then, perhaps, if he had seated himself beside her to commence the tale of a small negro foundling taken from Jamaica upon the ship called the Apolline to start a new life in England, July may have recognised this Thomas Kinsman as her son.
And his chronicle might have begun with lengthy, excited description of a sea voyage; with men dangling high from the ship’s masts; a raging deep-blue ocean drenching foaming water over all aboard; his shivering body encrusted with a fine layer of salt. But probably not. For Thomas Kinsman would want you first to know the name of the parish where the Kinsman family finally rested when they arrived in England. So he would commence his tale with the word Hornsey (that being the parish), before moving on to give you the name and the precise location (perhaps with the aid of some map) of the village of Crouch End.
Then would come the depiction of a small house upon a street named Maynard. (Sometimes he will call this street Mayfield and frown upon his listener for believing it called anything other than this—but then, within the next telling, Maynard would once again appear.) He will want you to understand that this house was much smaller than the one the Kinsmans had occupied in Jamaica, and that its kitchen was set under the same roof as the house. But no servants did scurry and run there; for Jane Kinsman, good-goodly woman that she was, did perform all the duties required for a minister’s household with very little help.
There was a fire kept lit within a grange and pots and pans did bubble and boil upon that stove all day long. While within a room called a front room, there was a coal fire. Yes, an open fire within a room where all the sitting and eating, and talking and reading, of his family was done. Sometimes the flames of this fire burned blue, owing to the gas that was given off from the mineral. But any listener would be wise to move Thomas Kinsman away from this fine detail, for his knowledge of coal stuffs could weary you before he has told you of bedtime in this little house. How the three boys—James, Henry and Thomas—every evening did run up the stairs to jump into a cold press-bed, where six fidgeting feet, elbows and knees tussled for warmth before nestling down to lock in sleep.
‘Jim, Henry, Black Tom, come out, come out,’ Thomas Kinsman will want you to hear—for this was yelled each morning by the ragged gang of children that lived within the rundown houses—the windows blackened with soot—that sat close to their dwelling across the street. He will then have you run with them to ascend a high hill to the road of Mount Pleasant from where you will watch the farm boys ploughing the fields below and follow the line of trees that seemed to stretch out across a dim-dark London to the cathedral of St Paul’s.
He will have you strolling with him over to the Crouch Hall estate to walk quietly within the park; to view the wildfowl nesting upon the island in the large lake and sit beneath a drooping willow tree where the water running under the bridge fell frothing for thirty feet; or have you crack the ice upon Cholmeley brook to free the ducks to slip-slide across its surface.
And you will watch him fight the bully-boy, John Smith, and feel him pushing his grimacing face down into the icy snow for calling Thomas Kinsman a savage; and the blood gushing from John Smith’s nose will turn that white snow once again into red slush.
And then Thomas Kinsman will see you stand astounded, your mouth agape, as Jacob Walker, leaning upon a freshly whittled stick, saunters into view at the edge of St Mary’s churchyard. For here is another negro within this little English village. You will watch as a skinny black man from the Americas, with his greying hair and deep drawling voice, who was servant to a missus in Highgate, presents a grateful and excited Thomas with a gift; the first of the many Penny Magazines he gave to his ‘little nigger brother’ whenever he chanced him.
And be in no doubt that Thomas Kinsman would joy to take you through each page of each edition of every Penny Magazine he read, so you too might marvel at the engravings of Goodrich Castle or Highgate Church, or sit engrossed reading of the fertilisation of larvae, or the use of the goat as a wet-nurse.
But you must rest awhile for once Thomas Kinsman starts you upon the journey through his schooldays at the Crouch End Academy, he will demand all your regard as he talks of his lessons in history, geography and arithmetic, Greek, French and Latin. He may even offer to conjugate some Latin verbs for you, but it would be prudent for any listener to refuse politely this proposal; and be thankful that his school books were lost upon the voyage back to Jamaica, for he would have you perusing each and every one.
All these events Thomas Kinsman would willingly impart to any listener; but the story of his life in England does not truly commence until that keen-eyed negro boy—now fourteen, with shoulders that are restless to broaden, hair that wishes to sprout in parts never before seen and a voice that craves to pitch low—was bound in apprenticeship to a printer near Fleet Street. James Kinsman signed a deed that tied Thomas to a Mr Linus Gray for seven years—not only for instruction into the trade of print, but also to board within his household for the duration.
For Thomas could no longer remain within the Kinsmans’ charge, as liquor had seen them all driven from Crouch End. James Kinsman had declared that he could not minister within a village where the beer shop and the public houses had greater congregation than any Sunday worship. And where the foremost family of the parish shamelessly made their prominence through the distilling of gin.
When James Kinsman had sought to have all dens of inebriation closed down within Hornsey, so the labouring classes might go about their work with clearer heads, a rough and abusive crowd had gathered outside his house in Maynard Street, banging frying pans, pots, kettles, boards, pokers, shovels, to demand that the family depart. And although James Kinsman was forced to leave Hornsey to take up his new ministry in Lewes, in the county of Sussex, the learned, detailed, and very long, pamphlet he wrote upon the riotous intoxication to be found within Crouch End remains to this day, unpublished.
But Thomas Kinsman’s black eyes will not dim when he recounts this leave-taking. No. Rather, he will place his hands together and thoughtfully raise them to his lips while he pronounces slowly, so as to exalt the meaning, that for boys like him—for foundlings—the choice before him for betterment was either employment in service or in trade; and to be a printer, he will say with startling delight, well, ever since he first studied those Penny Magazines, to be a printer was his avid wish.
And, before you will realise, you will be standing within a cramped dusty printing office on the south side of Fleet Street in Water Lane, where the dim sunlight from the window shows motes of dust as big as coins gliding through the air. Linus Gray—a skinny, tall man of about two and thirty with a nose so pointed he could spear a fish with it and a jaw square as nobility—was at a desk with his head bowed, perusing several large sheets of paper with the care of a surgeon examining an open wound, as his new apprentice stepped in.
Linus’s expression, at first
However, when Linus Gray’s wife, Susan, first saw the new apprentice who was to lodge with them in their attic room, she screamed. Susan Gray begged her husband not to have a Hottentot board in their house; she thought it bad luck. But Linus ignored her concern and dismissed it with the word, ‘fiddlesticks’.
Thomas wrote to James Kinsman to tell that Susan Gray liked him so little and feared him so much that she carried a broom with her when he was about the house so that if Thomas ever approached her she might hold him the length of it from her. James Kinsman, in reply, promised to pray that Thomas would soon come to regard Susan Gray as his mother.
Alone at the top of the Grays’ tall narrow house that sat adjacent to the print office, in a room whose sloping roof rendered it no bigger than a cupboard, sitting by the dingy light and feeble heat of two coals that burned in the grate, wrapped in a blanket and wiping the black snot that ran from his nose upon his sleeve—Thomas wept.
And you might see a cloud come into Thomas Kinsman’s eye as he recounts those early days in London Town. He may recite for you the prayer he made—the one for the Kinsmans, all of them, to please, please, please, come find him. He may even admit to his listener that he did think to run away. But probably not. Instead, Thomas Kinsman will wave his hand to dismiss your concern. He may even use the word fiddlesticks. For he will not leave his listener to dwell upon sorrow when the print office beckons and he can show you what a good little devil he became.