The Long Song by Andrea Levy

  ‘You’ll prefer strawberry jam from England soon as we all do,’ her brother said.

  ‘Never, never, never!’ Caroline laughed. ‘May we have punch?’ she requested, and when told, ‘It’s no longer drunk much here,’ she stamped her pink satin slippered foot upon the ground to protest, ‘Why ever not!’

  ‘It’s not the fashion,’ her brother told her and regretted it almost at once when her voice, rising shrill as the squeal from the hinge on a loose shutter, said, ‘What should we care for fashion. Everyone in England talks of Jamaican punch and I should like to try it. And besides, the rum and water here is milled far too weak.’

  Whilst watching pomegranate, paw-paw, naseberry, and sour sop being pushed into her eager mouth by her stout, sticky fingers for most hours of the day, her brother warned, ‘You are eating too much fruit, Caroline. It’s not good for the constitution in this climate.’ He suggested she might consider, until she was a little stronger after her journey, eating more pork instead.

  ‘Pork! Oh, John, one can eat pork anywhere,’ Caroline twittered. No, his sister said, she was ready, in perhaps a day or two, to try a little turtle. Why not? It looked delightful served in its upturned shell. For did she not eat rabbit, tripe, and pigs’ heads at home? She told her brother, ‘If turtle is considered fine food in this foreign place then I must taste it, even if only the once.’ She wanted to try everything—oh yes, everything. Although not long out of widow’s weeds, she was keen to experience the curious, no matter who counselled against it. Bring on the duck, guinea birds and jack fish, for Mrs Caroline Mortimer was eager to nibble upon their bones. Even breadfruit that was destined for the slaves’ table. ‘Why should I not try it too?’ she asked her brother, who replied sternly that several of his slaves had been whipped for eating dirt—did she propose to try that delicacy also?

  Caroline was blessed of a long, pointed nose that, while giving her silhouette a fine distinction from across a dim-lit room, was nevertheless unable to feel what was happening at its tip. Consequently there was often something stuck upon the end of it, of which she was totally unaware; the yellow stain of pollen from the hibiscus she was admiring; a white daub of cream from some milk she was drinking; even a drop of snot from a nasal chill could, like a rain drop caught upon the tip of a leaf, remain dangling and swaying for quite some time. And it was this insensible nose that, her brother began to fear, would be dipping into everything upon this plantation named Amity before too long.

  But there was one curiosity which Caroline Mortimer had found herself entering upon with an uncharacteristic trepidation. The negroes. Before she embarked upon her journey, her brother had written to advise that she should be sure to bring with her a maid servant—a steady young woman, respectable, trustworthy, perhaps even of a religious character. For her brother went on to warn that negroes did not always make the kind of servants to which Caroline may have become accustomed.

  This extraordinary missive caused Caroline not only to laugh, but to wish her late husband were still alive to read it. For it had always been a source of great aggravation to Edmund Mortimer that his wife’s brother would boast, on his all-too-frequent visits, how many slaves he possessed in the Caribbean and, of that number, how many of those slaves toiled round and about his great house. With a flourish of the hand and the ponderous look of someone who could not quite bring it to mind, he would tell his sister and her husband, ‘Oh there are more than fifty and one hundred upon the land and well, upwards of thirty in the house.’

  It would irritate Edmund Mortimer beyond torment when, upon observing their one slatternly, grubby, maid-of-all-work serving at table, Caroline’s brother would eye their situation with something like pity. And there was her brother now telling her that she should bring that one miserable girl across the seas. Dress her up in her cast-offs so she might pass as a lady’s maid, when he had what? Upwards of two hundred slaves at his command! Her husband would surely have turned in his grave at this suggestion, if it were not for the fact that Edmund Mortimer, when buried, was so fat that there was not the required space within the box.

  So, upon arrival in this often and eagerly conjured place, Caroline was expecting to encounter several negroes about the house, for it was no more than she had been led to believe. But what she had not foreseen was that, when the door of her brother’s fine property was at first opened, she would find herself quite girdled by a swarm of black faces. While her brother busied himself with an instruction to a ragged black boy upon the veranda of the house on where to take Mary—the requested maid servant who was, after the voyage, really quite sick—three negro women paused in their tasks so they might better stare upon Caroline.

  One—wearing a bright-red madras kerchief upon her head and an apron at her waist that was so splattered with stains it did appear like a map—was chewing upon something with her mouth agape. Another picked at the contents of her nose, wiping it upon the filthy rag of her skirt as she angled her head awkwardly so she might better see through an eye that was bruised-bloody, swollen and half closed. The third, a tall, gangly creature, had the bodice of her dress untied, which drooped slovenly at her waist, leaving her arms, like the branches of some dead tree, quite naked. None had on shoes.

  But Caroline, unperturbed by the glowering of these slaves, gazed upon them civilly, for she believed they would soon curtsey, then offer her some light refreshment perhaps. She was even unpinning her bonnet, for she was sure they would want to take it from her to set it upon some stand. But they did not. Instead their eyes, which Caroline thought appeared like shining marbles rolling in soot, commenced to peruse her slowly, from the bottom of her brown leather boots to the top of her fleshy blond head. Then, opening her arms wide, the tall gangly one said, ‘Come, see how broad is she!’ At which Caroline took a long step away from them—not on account of this impudent scorning, but in fear of the teeth in their heads that, as they laughed upon her, bared white and sharp as any savage beasts.

  Just then a chicken had run by her, wings flapping, squawking loudly, slipping and falling upon the polished floor. It was being chased by a young negro girl, whose outstretched arms made a clumsy grab for the neck of the fowl, all the while screeching, ‘Catch it up quick. Catch it up!’ Soon another chicken appeared, which looked to be chasing the girl. The three negro women promptly joined in this havoc, all running around pell-mell until none could tell who was chasing who.

  Caroline at once pinioned herself to the wall, for she feared she might be tripped and trussed in this commotion. Then two boys, barely clothed, appeared upon the scene from who-knows-where to jump around in this sport. All at once a piercing yell, as mighty as a tree splitting at its trunk, cried, ‘Me chicken done gone. Bring back de chicken.’ A negro woman, no larger than a child but with a skin wrinkled as dried fruit, appeared banging a large cleaver against a metal bucket. If it were not for her continuing to screech, ‘Where me chicken don gone?’ over and over, Caroline would scarce have believed that such a diminutive creature could raise so much holler.

  Soon all that Caroline beheld were negroes, like solid shadows prancing before her. Oh, how many besieged her there? And where could they all have come from? Chinks in some wall, holes within the floor? Did they reside one-on-top-the-other in some chest? Or scurry like galliwasps under the house? Where? Where? Caroline cursed that the lord only gave her two hands! For which should she do—cover her ears against the calamitous din or her nose? For the stench of their swirling bodies was malodorous as a begrimed mule in the heat.

  Her brother, finally appearing, seemed to walk on through this confusion paying it no heed, ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room,’ he said. Then, noticing the fright which sat upon his sister’s face as if sketched from a comical cartoon, he shouted, ‘Will you all be silent! Be quiet. Do you hear me?’ before guiding Caroline by the elbow through the fleeting breach in the bedlam.

  After a few days upon the island, Caroline was moved to enquire of her brother whether all of his fable
d upward of two hundred slaves did, in matter-of-fact, reside around and about them in the great house. Her brother had believed it not a serious question and therefore supplied no answer but that of a small smirk. But for Caroline, it was asked in earnest. For there seemed to be no place in that mighty house where solitude was to be found. No corner where she did not find a negro lurking. No room that was free of a negro affecting some task. No window that, when looked through, saw a view that was other than these blackies about some mischief. Even the cupboards, when opened, seemed to contain little more than black boys who, like insects caught in a trap, peered out at her from the inside.

  And yet, for all these house slaves that swirled around her every day, Caroline found the summoning of any of them to do her bidding a toilsome task for which she had no skill. They just stared on her entranced, like children upon Bonfire Night before the pinwheel starts to spin.

  The negro girl, Molly, the one with the bruised, swollen eye, was charged by her brother to act as Caroline’s temporary lady’s maid. And act she did. For this girl seemed to know nothing of the duties that were required of her. Why, every morning this dull-witted creature would attempt to incarcerate Caroline into her spotted linen spencer the wrong way round; no command in an English language Caroline knew could get this slave to place it about her shoulders in the right way. As for the tape ties at the seam of her dress, the girl merely played with them like a kitten with string, for she was unable to tie a simple knot, let alone a delicate bow.

  She combed hair as if untangling some rogue threads on the fringe of a carpet and tipped a full bucket of cold water over Caroline as she sat naked in a bath believing warmed water about to be brought. When Caroline summoned her brother to protest her behaviour, this slave girl, with hair matted as carding-wool, threw herself at his feet, clutching his legs and begging, ‘Me make mistake, massa. Me no do it again, massa. Me learn. Missus gon’ smile pretty ’pon me soon,’ to avoid her punishment.

  Caroline’s sister-in-law, Agnes, having been born upon the island a Creole, found no trouble in procuring the required help. Her clothing was pressed and presented to her in the mornings, a jug of water brought for washing, her night pot collected and cleared, her room swept when she was not present to choke upon the dust, and her shutters opened for her upon the daylight.

  But Caroline observed that Agnes was able to command these slaves in their own strange tongue. She could bellow at those negroes with the same force that the negroes did bellow at each other. Agnes was heavy with child and although slight of frame, still she allowed no bulging protrusion at her waist to impede her when she was admonishing her slaves. Why, she jumped about as spiritedly as a mad hare—arms flailing, feet stamping, her thick red hair coming loose from its tie as she snapped, shouted, clapped and yelled to get her way.

  After this exhausting work was done Agnes would lie upon her daybed with her arms dangling, too fatigued to lift them. She was then unable to answer even the simplest of Caroline’s enquiries without a weariness entering her tone or a gentle snoring commencing—sometimes when Caroline was still speaking.

  In her first meeting with Agnes, in the cool drawing room of the great house, her sister-in-law had, in a blast of breath that left Caroline quite giddy, proclaimed that her family was from Scotland. Excepting Agnes’s flaming red hair, the profusion of freckles upon her face and neck (which she happily displayed instead of hiding with cosmetic preparations), and an abundance of tartan trimmings in and about the chairs in the room, Caroline detected nothing of the Scotch about this bouncy young woman.

  ‘You must show them who is master and who is slave. Leave them no room to fool you. Them is tricky, Caroline,’ Agnes said when instructing Caroline on the management of slaves. Using Molly as her example, Agnes called the slave girl to her and pointed her finger at the blackened eye. ‘She tie me shoe so tight me have to scream. She sitting at me feet so I give her one kick. You think she ever tie me shoe so tight again? No, no, no—for she learn.’ Pushing Molly forward so Caroline might better inspect the bruised wound for the imprint of Agnes’s shoe, she said, ‘Be firm. For these blacks be like children—all must be shown how is good and how is bad.’

  And, every night since Caroline had arrived upon the island, she had been forced to listen to the panting, slapping, and giggling that crept over the walls from her brother’s room into her own. For this grand house, which had been lavished with so much vulgar finery—why, even the silver was gilded—nevertheless had bedroom walls that were not tall enough to reach all the way up into the wood of the eaves. The ridiculous din of the night creatures with their eternal screeching could not block the lusty sounds Agnes—oh yes, Agnes—made every night. Her brother, Caroline decided then, was quite prudent in never having brought Agnes to England, for his wife’s inelegant, beastly manners and ridiculous way of speaking would surely have seen her locked away.

  After two weeks in Agnes’s company—where even a little light embroidery or the arranging of a vase of flowers seemed too much toil for her sister-in-law, who slept upon her daybed for so many hours of the day that Caroline began to believe that perhaps, like a bat, she was only aroused at night, Caroline was forced to admit to being bored. She even began to crave the company of Mary, her lady’s maid, who had never uttered more than three words of sense in the whole time she had been in her employ; she did, however, remain awake. But Mary was still quite sick; nursed in a darkened hut no bigger than a kennel by a large negro woman who guarded Mary’s feeble, sweating, panting body as fiercely as a dog with a bone. And as for the companionship of her brother John, he had begun to seem like a vision in the heat, for every time Caroline approached him he would simply vanish. Until one day, with the determination of a trapper, Caroline contrived to snare him upon the veranda of the house.

  ‘John, may we take a stroll around the grounds?’ she implored.

  ‘A stroll, Caroline! This is not England. In two steps the heat would claim you. No one strolls here,’ her brother replied.

  ‘A ride then, John—I still know how.’

  ‘The terrain is far too dangerous and, besides, I have no horse that could possibly take your . . .’ he said, prudently losing into a mumble the words which referred to Caroline’s robust dimensions.

  ‘Oh, John, please take me around, I wish to see my new home and understand all its workings,’ she said, her voice rising shrill enough to conjure that squeaking hinge anew.

  So, reader, let me once more draw your eye to that road through the plantation named Amity—to the gig, to the single chestnut horse and the bumpy progress being made by John Howarth and his sister Caroline who sit within. Walking along this road in the path that the gig would eventually take, was a large black slave woman. Upon her head was a straw basket filled with unruly sweet cassava roots, poised so ably she looked to be wearing an ornate hat. Her skirt, once striped yellow and black was, from its years of being drenched in a river, pounded against rock and baked in the sun, only whispering its former lustre. But the child walking at her side was attired in a dress of the same fabric and, like a draper’s sample, this miniature displayed the cloth almost in its original hues.

  The little girl halted her stride so she might better peruse a scrubby periwinkle that struggled to bloom dainty at the side of the path. She plucked the plant and waved it gently in the air in the hope that the woman might stop to look upon the purple petals. But the woman was unaware that the child no longer walked at her side. ‘Mama,’ the girl called, and as her mama turned upon hearing the cry, the girl ran to her, holding out the flower.

  The woman, bending to look upon the bloom gripped tight in her daughter’s hand, tipped her head only enough so the balance of the produce would not be disturbed. She nodded a smile upon her child, then straightened once more and walked on. But the little girl began pulling ferociously at the cloth of her mother’s skirt to arrest her progress—planting her bare feet firmly into the earth for a solid grip. Although only pulling with one hand, the
skirt nevertheless began to strain, almost to ripping. The woman, slapping the child’s hands from the feeble cloth, was forced to stop to take heed of her.

  She removed the basket from her head to place it carefully upon the ground, then took the flower from the child between her finger and thumb. She lifted it to her nose before passing it under the nose of the child. Cupping her hands around her mother’s broad fingers, the girl inhaled deeply upon its scent. And as the mother began to brush the dainty petals of the flower across the cheek of the little girl, they both closed their eyes in the reverie of the soft strokes. At last the woman, straightening up to place the basket of produce once more upon her head, began walking on, while the little girl, still curious, dallied to find more flowers to pick.

  ‘Oh, how adorable,’ Caroline said upon seeing a little negro girl in a yellow and black striped dress, tenderly gathering up a posy of purple flowers. Her brother, however, observing only two slaves walking in this late morning upon a road that climbs out of the valley and off his lands, had concerns of a different kind.

  ‘Hey you, stop there,’ he commanded of the slave woman as the gig drew up by her side. And it was then that Kitty turned her eyes to look upon her massa.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘Me have pass, massa. Me and me pickney. Me have talkee-talkee, massa.’

  John Howarth held out his hand so Kitty might deliver him the pass. She took the ragged piece of yellowing paper from the folds at the band of her skirt. His snatching hand almost ripped the precious consent. ‘Where are you going? It’s too late for market?’ he said.

  ‘Please, massa, me go Unity Pen.’