The Long Song

by Andrea Levy

  CHAPTER 17

  I CAN GO NO further! Reader, my story is at an end. Close up this book and go about your day. You have heard all that I have to tell of a life lived upon this sugar island. This wretched pen will blot and splutter with ink no more in pursuance of our character July. I now lay it down in its final rest.

  Within this hot-hot and dusty day your storyteller has suffered an anguish and an indignity that she just cannot endure. My son, Thomas, has come to me in a state of great agitation—the pulsing vein upon his head throbbing and wriggling as if about to be born from within him. (But his face remaining as composed as a man wishing to enquire my favourite colour—be it red or blue? For that is my son’s character; he will not breathe words upon you to speak what he intends—he must give you some other sign.)

  I did not worry, for I believed this vexation had its cause in the noise and fuss that has recently blared within our household. Lillian and her daughters, Louise, Corinne and May, have of late taken to quarrelling over any and every little thing that does occur. You never will have heard the like, reader.

  This morning, those three mischievous girls greeted me at the table, each with their big lip pushed out so far in sulk that it turned me from my porridge. And the cause? Their mama requires them to wear pink ribbon within their hair, when yellow is the fashion. So wear yellow, I tell them. They have not yellow, they weep, before them bang, slam, crash every door within the house. Come, it is not only the floors that do shake when there is such commotion. So I believed my son to have had rough words with Lillian and his pickney about the carry-on.

  Upon entering my room, my son produced the pages that you have just read and commenced to wave them in front of my face. The realisation that the person who was rousing my son to feeling was me—his old and frailing mama—was my first surprise. The second, was the question he required me to answer: ‘What of the son that July gave life to?’ he asked.

  It was so rudely spoken that I believed my ears to be hearing a little devil’s prank. So I replied, ‘Wha’ ya say?’

  He blow out his breath in a sigh; for my son is such a gentleman that he prefers his mama not to speak in this rough way but to say pardon, like I am some lordly white missus. ‘Oh, pardon me, son, but did I hear your words correctly?’

  ‘Mama,’ he go on, ‘July gave birth to a son whom she then abandoned at the door at the Baptist minister’s manse. Why is there no telling of this within your story?’

  Reader, those words slapped my face as fierce as any hand my son could have raised. What was he now demanding? Does he require to direct what I write within these pages? I am sure that within those publishing houses in England, the ones my son does speak of with such licky-licky praise, those white people do listen with a greedy ear upon what the storyteller has to tell. Them do not say, ‘Oh, let us know the devilment of this person here, or the nasty-nasty deed of that character there.’ No. Them is grateful for any story told. But not so my son.

  This tale is of my making. This story is told for my amusement. What befalls July is for me to devise. Better that my son save his wrath for those parts of his household which deserve to see the anger he can raise, was my reply.

  ‘Mama,’ he say to me, ‘do not take me for a fool. This is the story of your own life, not of your creating, I can see this.’

  ‘No it is not,’ I tell him.

  ‘It is,’ him say.

  ‘It is of my making,’ I tell him.

  ‘It is not—it is of your life lived,’ him tell me.

  ‘Oh no, it is not.’

  ‘Oh yes, it is.’

  We did step this fancy argument too long for my delicate stomach. And my son’s finger did wave upon me for the whole time. It is not for a son to wag his finger upon his mama, but the other way about! And he huffed and puffed to me that I needs tell why he was abandoned and that I must speak true.

  Sometimes his demands upon me are as constricting as the corset they bind me in to keep me as a lady.

  But I must do as my son bids. Else I may wake to find my valise—with my piece of lace and my cracked plate—placed outside the gates of this house, and my aging nagging bones cast out to join them. My son may shake his head upon this circumstance, but his old mama has now witnessed that possibility within his eye.

  So I must upon this page affirm that a son was indeed born to July. After the grievous pain of birthing—for July was still a young girl who did not possess the width within her body to push out this child’s enormous head with any ease—Nimrod’s son was born in upon this world.

  His legs did not bow (unlike those of the man who sired him), and up to now, that son has a good head of hair. But still, July, at that time, did look upon this tiny newborn and think him the ugliest black-skinned child she had ever seen. There, these words are true—so does my son find joy within them? He has a mama whose lip curled with disgust when first she saw that a child of hers was as black as a nigger. And even if my son now wishes to beg his storyteller to change this faithful detail, alas, it cannot be done.

  July had no intention to suckle this misbegotten black pickaninny. But neither did she wish to leave him mewling upon a mound of trash, nor whimpering within the wood. She found no strength to smother him, nor will to hold him under the river’s swell. After two days of hiding her son from all that was this world, July fixed upon the notion of leaving him to the minister-man. For July had heard tell that minister-men did say that even ugly-ugly slaves with thick lips and noses flat as milling stones were the children of God. So she wrapped her pickney in a rough cloth, tied her red kerchief at his head and within a moonless night walked the stony trail to the baptist minister’s house. There was no hesitation shivering her breast as July placed her baby upon a stone by the gate. Preacher-man would shelter him—she knew. And that, reader, is what preacher-man did do.

  So come, ask my son to tell you of those days. Will he drum his chest with maddening rage or wipe tears of lament from his clouded eye at the loss of his mama? No, he will not. Rather, he will sing you a joyous melody of the sweet life lived with the English preacher, James Kinsman, and his saintly, good-goodly wife Jane. Do you think that you will be able to go about your day before my son has told you all? Then think that no more.

  My son will begin with how Mr Kinsman and his wife procured a wet nurse to suckle him. He will then state how this princely nourishment grew him strong (and doubtless add to this, the feature tall—but even to this day, my son is not tall). He was baptised Thomas—after one of Jesus Christ’s twelve apostles—in the chapel just outside the town. Although he was required to lay his bed within the servants’ hut of the Kinsman household, my son will assure you that he was considered as much a member of that family as their own two sons, James and Henry. Of course he was required to work for his board, but his chores—sweeping the yard, feeding the chickens—were no more burdensome than that of any houseboy. And on Sundays he was allowed to sup at the same table with the family. My son was not a slave, but a freeman from his second year.

  ‘The salvation of the savage’ was Mr Kinsman’s mission. He believed that even the blackest negro could be turned from sable heathen into a learned man, under his and God’s tutelage. My son was given a Christian education within his school and Mr Kinsman was pledged to write a paper upon the progress of his learning for the Baptist Magazine in London. On the first day of his schooling, my son received a pair of the finest leather shoes. Even today he has those shoes hung from a hook upon the wall in his study. Shoes upon a wall! He will not discard them, for those two tiny cracked-leather boots contain all the dear memories he has of the Kinsmans and his scholarship.

  Oh, see my son’s eyes light with merriment as he recalls for you the time betwixt sunrise and sunset of each day that he did spend at that Baptist mission school. He read the scriptures with distinction and accuracy, and could write with considerable knowledge upon both civil and sacred geography. Every Wednesday he was tested upon his understanding of the biblical antiquiti
es, followed by an interrogation—for his general examination—of the emblems, figures, parables and most remarkable passages of the bible. My son could recite every word of 238 hymns—indeed the whole number that were contained within the Sunday Scholar’s Companion. And his arithmetic was advanced as far as vulgar fractions.

  A school feast was held every year in the chapel yard beneath the shade of the orange trees, where a gathering of people from about the parish came to observe the miracle of the little learned negroes of the Baptist mission school. Even July came once to stare. And my son—standing in white breeches with his shoes upon his feet, hands clasped at his front, head erect, mouth open wide as a toad and lungs swelling with tune—led the little black-faced choir in the joyful singing of the hymn, ‘Eternal God we look to Thee’.

  When Mr Kinsman’s paper for the Baptist Magazine was complete, he published it under the title, ‘Tree of the Lord’s Right-Hand Planting: The Remarkable Effect of the Good Christian Education upon a Negro Foundling on the Caribbean Island of Jamaica’.

  My son was that Baptist minister’s boast. Go ask him. With humble hesitancy (that will not linger long), my son will report how often times it seemed that Mr Kinsman and his good-goodly wife, Jane, found more delight in him than they did in their own sons. When it came time for James Kinsman and his family to leave Jamaica for London, after the completion of their mission work, none within that household could conceive of sailing from this island without my son amongst them. And when he journeyed to England with the family aboard a ship called the Apolline, it was not as a servant, oh no, it was as, ‘the remarkable negro boy, Thomas Kinsman’.

  Not a snivel nor a moan, will my son send forth while singing the tale of his young life. Yet still, you may think to judge July harshly. But, reader, if your storyteller were to tell of life with July through those times, you would hear no sweet melody but forbidding discord. You would turn your head away. You would cry, lies! You would pass over those pages and beg me lead you to better days.

  Shall I oblige you to read how many times Caroline Mortimer ordered that July be pinioned within the stocks as punishment for her wrongdoings after those riots? Should I paint a scene so you may conceive of how often the sizzle of the sun’s heat fried July’s skin to blisters and scorched her mouth so dry that she did not have spittle nor breath to shoo away any creature or beings that came to plague her within those long nights?

  Or maybe I should find pretty words that could explain to you what befell Patience in those days? How, after the massa had been laid to rest in the churchyard, she walked from Amity in the hope of finding Godfrey in town, and returning him to his proper place; calming the fretful and arranging the duties within the kitchen. She was caught upon the road by the militia, who charged that she was a runaway rebel. She received fifty lashes for her crime. Would you like me to describe the lesions upon her back and let you hear the woebegone howl she emitted when the stinking cloth that had wrapped the wound was pulled off? Perhaps you would care to watch her die. Or see the anguish that so clouded Miss Hannah’s soul that she crawled into her grave two days after Patience. Shall we walk in the procession of these two burials? Perhaps to accompany Florence and Lucy as they hold up Molly—ragged and raging and screaming fearful that she will be sold away. Reader, would you like to hear Byron weeping?

  In those dark days our July—that mischievous girl that you have come to know, that could twist her missus to any bidding and tease Molly to tears, that grinning girl who did slide the whole length of the hall upon her dirty apron, and gaily put a bed sheet upon a table and wine out of window—that July was forsaken by her ravaged spirit and soon departed. And a withered and mournful girl stumbled in, unsteady, to take her part. With eyes dulled as filthy water, this July was so fearful a young woman that the barking of a dog, the slamming of door, the clatter of a dropped spoon, would see her tremble as if the earth did wobble beneath her. Every fresh morning she puzzled over whether she had woken, for, as in her sleeping dreams, each tree she did gaze upon saw her lost-found-lost mama dangling there within the rustling leaves and sagging fruit. Every mouthful she ate tasted only of Nimrod’s blood. And always beneath her feet, a low rumbling of galloping horses menaced her.

  That miserable July had no misgivings. She devised a story that told how the black-skinned baby she gave life to died rigid and grey with the very first lungful of air it breathed.

  And this is why I can go no further. This is why my story is at an end. For I know that my reader does not wish to be told tales as ugly as these. And please believe your storyteller when she declares that she has no wish to pen them. It is only my son that desires it. For he believes his mama should suffer every little thing again. Him wan’ me suffer every likkle t’ing again!

  CHAPTER 18

  READER, MY SON IS quelled! Kindness has once more returned to his eye. Despite what you may have learned within my last pages, I beg you do not think ill of Thomas Kinsman. He is a good son and has come to his mama with his head bowed in abashed apology.

  Within his hand he carried some papers which, he explained to me with childish passion, was an edition of the magazine of the Baptist mission in England. It seems that this publication has been in my son’s possession for nearly as long as his little leather boots; and it is evident that as much care has been lavished upon this document’s sadly browning and brittle pages. He desired his mama to peruse it, he said. So I did as I was bid.

  Oh, reader, imagine my surprise when I alighted upon an essay printed within this august volume which was penned by none other than the wife of the baptist minister-man—the saintly, good-goodly Jane Kinsman! Within it, she wrote of the time when she—living in Jamaica with her husband and her two sons—found a negro slave child abandoned outside the door of their manse. After taking in the child and baptising him Thomas, she then ventured to find out who had mothered this slave. A person within the nearby town (she did not within this essay say whom), believed the baby to have been the pickney of a house slave called July. Imagine, July’s name was printed there for all in England to read!

  The story then carries on that this house-slave, July, was approached secretly within the gardens at Amity by Jane Kinsman. When this slave realised that the woman who had her pickney was now standing before her, she did begin to shake with fear. She then begged Jane Kinsman to keep her son or else her missus (this paper did not say Caroline Mortimer, but all would know, for there was no other missus at Amity), was determined upon selling her slave baby away. Our author then goes on (at great length and in a very ponderous style that could have done with some lightness within its tone), to say that this is what she did—she promised this slave girl that she would rear her baby so the baby would not be sold.

  Oh, reader, how this article did make me laugh when this missionary’s wife went on to say that when she assured the slave that she would take good care of her baby, the slave was so pitifully grateful that she did drop to her knees, snivelling and crying and kissing this woman’s hands. And you know what? It is true, reader! For it was exactly how July behaved upon that day; come, how else was she to get this white woman to raise her black baby?

  But then Jane Kinsman did add (in this too sentimental essay, full-full of self-regard that was so beloved of white women at this time), that she did ask the little slave girl (that is our July), ‘Was your son born in wedlock?’ Jane Kinsman then states that this guileless, naïve and simple negro (these are her words, reader, and not my own), did then reply, ‘No, missus, him was born in de wood—where be wedlock?’

  Reader, let me assure you now and make as plain as I might—July said no such fool-fool thing to that white missus, at that time or any other! Cha.

  My son agrees, I must now return to my story with some haste, before another foolish white woman might think to seize it with the purpose of belching out some nonsensical tale on my behalf. But before my son does accuse me once more of falsehood, allow me to make a minor amend.

  Do you recall,
reader, that midnight hour when slavery ended? The pages within my tale which told of how the coffin that fancifully contained that oppression was buried within the earth? That remarkable night where Molly did fondly hug July? Well, here is where my correction must come. As far as your storyteller is aware, Molly did never once embrace anyone in the whole of her days. And July was not within the town to bear witness to the portentous revelry of that night. Your storyteller did find the chronicle of that occasion written within the pages of some other book—the title of which is no longer within my recall.

  For I feared you would think my tale very dull indeed if, when the chains of bondage were finally ripped from the negro, and slavery declared no more, our July was not skipping joyous within the celebrations. But, alas, upon that glorious night of deliverance, July was, as you shall now read, confined within the tedious company of her missus.

  CHAPTER 19

  TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, tick-tock. Through one ear July could hear the long clock within the drawing room as it counted down for her the appointed hour when the false-free of apprenticeship was ended, and she could truly no longer be held as a slave. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Her other ear, however, was forcibly required to heed the babble of her missus.

  Caroline Mortimer was engaged in belatedly answering the points of an argument she had recently had with her overseer John Lord —just before that overseer, in a bluster of contempt, had run down the piazza steps, mounted his horse and galloped away out of her employ.