He stopped again. Dreghorn at that moment was the loveliest place on earth. The owl drifted overhead, a ghostly white splash on the sky. What more could there be than this?
What right, he wondered again, with no friend there to be either appalled or made indifferent through intoxication, what right had man to expect a future state?
Ballindean, August 1773
James Wedderburn woke to the sound of his bedroom door opening. A few seconds later came the drawing of curtains. Light poured into the room. A servant was fussing about with hot water and a basin.
‘Good morning, sir. Would ye like assistance tae dress?’
James stretched under the sheets. The bed was extremely comfortable. His head was mildly sore.
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s no lang efter seiven.’
‘Good God.’
‘Sir John sent me tae wake ye. He is hoping ye’ll accompany him roond the loch.’
James sat up. He had not yet got used to hearing his brother referred to as ‘Sir John’. He did not even know if the title was officially sanctioned.
The servant, middle-aged and staid-looking, stood expectantly beside the basin.
‘Are there no young maids to come and help me with that?’
The man looked mildly shocked. ‘Oh, no, sir. That wouldna be richt.’
‘Sir John wouldn’t approve of it?’
‘No, sir. Nor would Lady Margaret.’
‘No, I don’t suppose she would. Well, what about Sir John’s neger?’ James waited for a response. The man blanked him. ‘Joseph Knight? I thought perhaps he might come this morning and show me his skills at shaving.’
The servant shifted uneasily. James carried on.
‘I’ve not seen him since I came. Sir John has not sold him, has he? Or is he dead?’
‘No, sir. But he’s no weel.’
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘I’m no sure, sir. He’s been in his bed twa days.’
‘I’ll look at him later. I’m a doctor.’
‘I ken, sir. But – wi respect – ye’ll no be able tae help him.’
‘What do you mean?’
The man tapped the side of his head. ‘It’s in here, in my opinion. That’s no easy cured. Especially no in a neger.’
‘I’ve cured negers of most things,’ James said. He had known within an hour of his arrival that something was amiss with Joseph: that he was nowhere to be seen, that his name was not referred to, that John seemed nervous whenever Jamaica was discussed – all these things pointed to some difficulty. Partly out of courtesy to Margaret, partly out of curiosity to see if or when John did mention him, James had bitten back his questions. But that had been yesterday. He sent the servant away, got up, washed and shaved his face, threw on some clothes and went downstairs.
Back in Scotland for the first time in twenty-seven years, James Wedderburn was adjusting rapidly. He had reached Edinburgh two days before from London, a quicker and more comfortable journey than the one he had made in the opposite direction as a fifteen-year-old. This time he had had overnight stops in good English inns rather than byres. He had spent a day in Edinburgh to see the astonishing changes taking place there, then pressed on to be reunited with his surviving sisters in Dundee, and with his brother John in Perthshire. Yesterday there had been a family gathering here at Ballindean, a great dinner and an evening of stories and recollections. And James had met, for the first time, his brother’s wife, Margaret Ogilvy.
In three and a half years of marriage she had already provided John with a son and two daughters, the second girl just a month previously. Margaret was twenty-five, dark, tall – over five foot ten inches – carried herself with a slow, dignified grace, and spoke quietly yet with great firmness, so that James saw his brother acting upon her mildest requests as if they were the orders of a queen. More astonishingly, he found himself doing the same. This amused and mildly excited him. He wondered if he would behave like this with all elegant, rich, white women.
Perhaps both her voice and her history had prompted the odd notion he had had over dinner – that she was a kind of reincarnation of Mary, Queen of Scots. Her speech was tinged with the slightest French accent, the result of her having been born in France and of spending her early years there. Her mother had been so vociferously Jacobite that after Culloden she had been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. Several months had passed before she had escaped by impersonating an old servant-woman, and had got across the sea to Boulogne to join her husband in exile. He was Lord David Ogilvy, under whom John Wedderburn had served, and he too, after hiding in the Angus hills for months, had slipped aboard a ship for France. Lord Ogilvy’s wife was now dead, he was still in exile, and he had not seen his daughter, who had been sent to live with her grandfather in the family seat at Cortachy Castle, for years.
At Cortachy, within a year of John Wedderburn’s return from Jamaica, he and Margaret had been married. It had been a great sadness to the bride and groom, Margaret told James, that not one of their parents had been present for the occasion: John’s own mother, who had lived to see him come home to Dundee, had died a few months before the wedding. ‘And of course,’ Margaret added, ‘we would have wished for you to be there. And your brothers, too. But since you could not return to see your mother in her last days, we could hardly expect you to come back just for a wedding.’
Despite the softness of Margaret’s voice, James had not missed the implied criticism. Of all their mother’s sons, only John had been at her deathbed. She had never seen James again after 1746. Her declining health had been a major factor in John’s decision to return to Scotland when he did. He and his sisters had written to James and Peter, warning them that she had not long to live, but neither had come home. It was still a sensitive matter, and James felt that all the implied guilt now lay on his head since Peter, just six months ago, had succumbed to yellow fever, leaving himself and John their generation’s only male survivors.
After dinner, James had brought the subject up over cigars in the library. He stood in front of the painting of the three of them – John, Peter and himself – and thought how unreal Jamaica looked to him already.
‘Margaret seems to hold it against me that I did not see Mama before she died. Why is that?’
‘She feels strongly about such things. Think of the history of her own family.’
‘And you? How do you feel?’
‘It was your choice.’
‘Come now, John. If Peter and I had not stayed on the plantations you would not have been able to come home when you did. You were here. All our sisters were with her. How many of us did she need?’
‘That is unworthy of you,’ John said.
‘Then it was unworthy of us to go away in the first place. I’m sorry, John, but I cannot abide that kind of sentimentality. What is the use of it?’
‘Family obligations are not about what is useful.’
‘They should be. You and I have been of immense use to the family by being in Jamaica this last quarter-century. We rescued it from poverty and obscurity. But we did not do it through sentiment.’
No more had been said on the subject, but James felt that he had won a point. Now, when he got downstairs, he found his brother waiting for him in the hallway.
‘What have you got me up at this hour for?’
‘It’s a lovely morning,’ John said. There was no trace of the disagreement in his tone or expression. ‘You’ll see the house at its best. Then we’ll have some breakfast.’
They walked in silence across the lawn and round the path which circled the loch. A light mist was gradually lifting from the surface of the water. There was hardly a breath of wind. On the far side they stopped to look at Ballindean.
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I think you have done well, John. Very well. I must find a place like this for myself.’
‘Does it remind you of anywhere?’
‘Should it?’
; ‘Not the house itself. Not the loch either. I mean the general position, the surrounding features. Do you not see a resemblance?’
James shrugged. ‘Not really.’
‘If the house were at the top of the braes instead of in their lee, and if Dundee’s harbour were loading barrels of rum, and if the carse were planted in cane …?’
‘You mean Dundee is Savanna, and this is Glen Isla?’
‘There’s something in it, don’t you think?’
‘Well, you’re stretching the point, but I see what you mean. Is that why you bought it?’
‘No, not at all. It only occurred to me later.’
James nodded, reassessing his view of the place. Ducks clattered across the water. The vegetation was heavy with dew. He looked down at his boots, which were drenched. ‘This is a very different wetness, though,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten it, the freshness of it. But it will get into your bones in winter.’
‘I never forgot it,’ said John. ‘Never. I always wanted this climate again.’
‘So did Sandy. There may come a time when you will complain about it.’
‘You mean, as Sandy would have? Well, let’s hope that is many years away. What do you think of Margaret?’
‘You’ve done well there, too. She’ll give you plenty more healthy bairns. And I imagine she runs the household pretty efficiently.’
‘Do you find her attractive?’
‘She’s very fine-looking. A credit to you.’
‘I feel somehow we were fated to be together – because of our families’ involvement in the Forty-five.’
‘She was not even born then. You don’t really believe in that kind of thing?’
John shook his head. ‘I don’t know. You mind you met Aeneas MacRoy yesterday?’
‘Your comrade from Culloden? The man that’s going to tutor your many sons and daughters? He’s a dour one, John. A bit too akin to a kirk-session clerk for my liking.’
‘There’s more to Aeneas than you think. Anyway, remember I told you how he had saved the colours after the battle, how he had kept them all those years? When he came here and gave them to me, it seemed so … significant. And when I gave them to Margaret it seemed to close a circle. The colours of her father’s regiment, and I handed them to her – I who had served under him, I whose own father had died in the cause, and who was now her husband. That felt like fate.’
James held up a finger. ‘But that was after you were married.’
John smiled. ‘Yes, well, I can see you are not persuaded. Come on, let’s find some breakfast.’
It was still not much after eight, and only the servants were about. The brothers took their porridge and a couple of drams in the dining room, then retired to the library. The latest Edinburgh Advertiser was there, which James scanned while John wrote some business letters. When he had finished, he asked, renewing their earlier conversation, ‘If you want a place like this for yourself, where do you intend to look?’
‘I thought we could be neighbours.’ James saw the slightly startled look on his brother’s face, and grinned widely. ‘It’s all right, I’m jesting. I’ll look nearer to Edinburgh, probably. Perthshire is very fine, it’s where our blood springs from and so forth, but I think I’ll trade being close to you for being a little closer to society.’
‘We’re hardly on the edge of civilisation here.’
‘You’re not far from it, and I’ve done my time in that location.’
‘James, Scotland is a changed country, a settled country. The Highland line does not exist any more. If you buy near Edinburgh you’ll pay for the privilege.’
‘I can afford it.’
‘And you’ll be looking for a wife too?’
‘Of course. Did I not always say I would? A Fife laird’s plump daughter – or better, a Glasgow tobacco trader’s. There’d be more money in that.’
James looked carefully to see his brother’s reaction. He had always known that his cavalierism made John uncomfortable. Now, safely married and a father, would he feel less threatened by it?
‘You’ll be ready to start a family, then?’ John said. ‘I mean a real one.’
‘You mean a white one. Of course, and the sooner the better. I’ll be forty-three next week. I’ll wager you I’m wed before I’m forty-four. That’s why I intend to spend the next few weeks in Edinburgh – to see what the availability of young ladies is.’
‘Yet you’ve not brought any of your other family with you, to benefit from whatever union you make. I suppose they’d be inconvenient when you open negotiations with these young ladies’ fathers.’
‘John, sarcasm does not become you. Anyway, you should know me well enough by now. You cannot embarrass me on that count. The father-in-law I get will be perfectly acquainted with the world, and will know that his daughter’s husband, if he had not been a-whoring in Jamaica, would only have been a-whoring closer to home. As for my other family, as you so quaintly put it, I owe them nothing. They owe me – there’s not a black bastard on that island with my blood in it that is yet a slave. And that brings me to another point – why have I not seen a sign of Joseph since I arrived? And why have you not even breathed his name? I know he is here. What’s wrong?’
John got up from behind his table and went over to the window. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to ask. I didn’t care to bore you with it yesterday, and Margaret finds the whole affair quite distressing. The truth is, we have been having some considerable trouble with Joseph.’
‘Trouble?’
‘He has turned recalcitrant. I begin to regret ever having brought him here.’
‘What has happened? I hear he is lying sick in his bed.’
‘Pretending to be sick. I’m not sure where to start. How much did I write about him in my letters these last two, three years? Did I tell you he was baptised?’
‘Yes, I recall that. I mind thinking it was probably inevitable once he was in Scotland. But, as you know, I was ever with George Kinloch on that subject – against Christianising them. How is he, by the way?’
‘George? He is well, and well established at Kinloch. He is a Justice of the Peace now.’
‘George keeping the peace? My God, how we are all come home! Well anyway, tell me about Joseph.’
‘To begin with, he behaved very well. We became friends, I suppose you could say, on the voyage home. I felt that he was very uneasy – he’d only once been on a ship before, when he was brought from Africa – so I took it upon myself to treat him with perhaps less formality than I should have. In a way I became more mentor than master. Don’t look like that – land rules cannot last two months at sea. We talked on a variety of subjects, and I taught him draughts and backgammon, and sometimes read to him – the Bible, and some easy poetry.
‘You’ll probably remember, he was a silent, unsmiling, reserved kind of boy most of the time at Glen Isla. I wanted to bring him out of himself, and we had so much time together on the voyage that I believe I was making real progress. He became enthusiastic about learning to read and write for himself. This, I thought, was admirable – it would be good for him to have a little culture. We made a start, but then we hit bad weather and that spoiled my plans. He got very sick, was scarce able to lift his head, let alone a pen. In fact, the way he is at the moment, in his bed, is not unlike how he was then. He never groaned or said anything, he just lay in a kind of stupor. It’s the same now.’
‘Only now it is a pretence.’
‘A pretence or a plan, yes, I think so. You know how they get it in their heads that they can outwit you by wearing you down. Well, by the time we made land there was much else to do and I said we would see about getting him lessons once things were more settled. I’ll say this, he did not girn for months, but carried himself just as a servant should. His blank face was perfect – gave him a kind of dignity, even if he was not aware of it himself. We were much admired – me for having him, and him for being mine. And of course the women wanted to eat him alive. That was a source of t
he trouble, though not at first.’
‘He was always a good-looking neger.’
‘Too good,’ John said. He came away from the window, and went over to the bookshelves. He looked for a particular volume, a slim one, took it down and laid it on the table. ‘This is instructive,’ he said, patting the book. ‘I’ll come to it by and by. Anyway, the purchase of this property and my marriage were soon the only matters that concerned me – forby making sure of our business affairs, of course, but they, as you know, were running pretty smoothly. The wedding went off at Cortachy, and Joseph played his part adequately –’
‘What did you have him do?’
‘Nothing very much. He was our page. Really he was there for decoration, and I must say he looked very fine. Then when we got possession here he seemed to settle into his tasks readily enough – looking after my clothes, shaving me, attending me to this place and that, helping with things like unpacking the books in here – but within a few weeks he was deaving me about his lessons, and about getting religious instruction. He said I had promised him, which of course I had not. He was beginning to aggravate me – it was ridiculous, but I kept feeling that I had to find him things to do. And then, like the answer to a prayer, Aeneas MacRoy came on the scene.’
James laughed. ‘It must have been an awesome prayer that that fellow was the answer to.’
‘Believe me, his timing was perfect. And he has proved loyal ever since. He had a school in Dundee but was closing it down. I got him to meet Joseph, and left them to themselves for half an hour. Then I asked Aeneas if Joseph would do, and he said he would, so we arranged that once a week he would come out to teach him his letters, and sometimes Joseph would go into town and sit in his school, so long as it existed. And then I told Joseph what we had agreed.’
John looked agitated. He picked up the slim volume he had selected, and holding it in one hand began to slap its spine into the palm of the other.
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