Redlegs

by Chris Dolan

  “Losing you would be a blow, Elspeth. But I’ll understand if you decide to take what little I can offer and begin your craft again elsewhere. I have good contacts in London and Edinburgh.”

  For a spell, the dilemma tormented her. To take to the stage again, perform in front of an audience, was a dream suddenly refreshed by those majestic old cloths that had been designed to be the backdrop of her grand debut. She agreed to give Albert an answer before he left again, this time to Milan. To clear her mind for the momentous decision, she set aside her plays and books, avoided Diana and Mary Miller, and walked the grounds, considering. Her route was always the same: coming down from the little porch, she strolled as far as the large fig tree in front of the house, turned back, walked down the west side of the house, up to the fencing of the first cane-fields, then back through her herb garden and the little copse of policy woodland, and thereby to the porch again. At every side there was an obstacle. The bluff cut her off from the cove, which the women, during the little time they had off work, used to paddle and sit and chatter. Behind the fig trees were the chattel-houses where Elspeth did not feel welcome. Right of them lay the thicket of wild woodland, whose shadows and obscure noises frightened her. Everywhere else, there was nothing but canefields. Sometimes she would walk a little down the drive, but the canopy created by jacarandas and cabbage palms oppressed her.

  On the day before she was due to give Albert her decision, she found herself a little further down the driveway than she had ventured before. It was noon-time, and Mary Miller and Sarah Alexander were going to the gates to receive provisions from the Edmondson farm: a weekly purchase of live chickens, potatoes, eddoes and milk.

  “I seldom come down here. I don’t know why, now that I am here. It’s rather lovely.”

  The trees at either side shaded them from the burning sun, and whipped up a little breeze between themselves. Rays of sun danced among them, so that light and shade were in perfect harmony. Their three voices took on a different timbre: the enclosure muted and softened them, creating an atmosphere of intimacy.

  “This is my favourite neuk,” Sarah said.

  “Mine too,” agreed Mary. “It minds me o’ the woods down by Ochter Burn. Though it’s mair tidy like.”

  Elspeth listened to their chatter about farm-folk and ministers, ploughboys and market days, as if Mary and Sarah had only come away for a day’s excursion from their homes. She enjoyed hearing the gossipy talk of her old country, but it was akin to eavesdropping on a conversation taking place behind a barn wall or a cottage door – her own most crucial experiences took place here in the West Indies, not the Scottish Lowlands. The three women turned a bend in the road, and she saw for the first time the remains of an old building on a rise above the tops of the trees.

  “That’s where the laird’s erectin’ his manufactory,” said Mary.

  “But what’s the old building?” Elspeth asked.

  Mary shrugged and said it looked like an old mill, of the ancient, round type you sometimes saw east of their old parish at Roseneath. The heap of stones looked to Elspeth less like a decayed building and more like the result of some natural calamity. The stones were of a grey she had not seen on the island before and sat as though they had been petrified mid-tumble, or had pushed their way up out of the ground, poised to burst into dreadful life. She shivered at the sight, but carried on walking, the path leaning off to the left, down towards the gate. Mary and Sarah were laughing at some of the tales of the workmen – older slaves and freedmen in the main – who had been brought up from Oistins and Speightstown to work on the new factory, when Elspeth for the first time in six years caught a glimpse of the Northpoint Plantation Estate gates.

  She had no memory of them. A simple, askew, set of rusted iron grilles set into sinking pillars, they could be gates to anywhere, in Scotland as much as the West Indies, yet the sight of them had a shocking effect on Elspeth. Her two companions had walked a little ahead, unaware of the trauma being wreaked upon their mistress. She could not catch her breath, felt her skin turn to ice, and her blood scorch. She thought she might be sick or fall over, just as she had done the night she first entered the big house. Behind the gates was visible only the smallest strip of open countryside: a few yards of roadway, a slight rise of pastureland behind, and a few stunted trees. To Mary and Sarah it was a bonny enough view: a patch of the world within reach, but where the rules and endless work of Northpoint no longer applied. To Elspeth, it loomed like a barren, malicious desert. The gates, road, field and tree moved in front of her, first hurtling towards her, then pulling back, the length of road stretching taut enough to snap. She turned away from the sight and her legs, though shaking and barely able to hold her, managed a few steps of flight. Hoisting her hem, she stumbled up the road as clumsily as she had on her first entrance. Soon, she broke into a run, Mary’s and Sarah’s voices calling behind her but lost in a rush of imagined wind streaming through the open gates.

  By the time she had reached the big house, she had regained, outwardly, her composure, though her heart punched loudly and erratically in her chest, and her vision was blurred. Mary came dashing up the path behind her, but Elspeth ignored her, kept going until she had entered the house and found the safety of the stairs.

  At that night’s evening meal she gave Albert the conclusion he had hoped for. For the time being at least, she would stay at Northpoint.

  “I think that is the right decision, Ellie. You’ve time and youth enough yet on your side. Together we’ll make Northpoint the great success only you and I and the Captain could achieve. After that, anything is possible.”

  Two years at the utmost, he swore. Perhaps another one or two to erect their playhouse. She would be nearing thirty by then she calculated. But they agreed that not a single day would pass in that time that she wouldn’t rehearse, read, discover new work, and discuss the arts with the greatest tutor she knew – Albert himself. She would breathe life into a Lady Macbeth and – yes, whyever not! – a Lady of the Lake that would have them tremble in their seats.

  She excused herself early and sat by the window of her room. What need did she have of the impoverished theatre world of Bridgetown? Without Nonie, Derrick, Isabella. Without the Ocean View, which Shaw had told her had melted into the sea as if it were made of candy-sticks. Without George. Didn’t she have a captive public here? And one more dependably appreciative would be hard to find. In a new place she would have to begin all over again, perhaps even in the chorus, competing with younger women. She was beyond that now. A woman of real experience and position. The frolics of another Nonie, the rivalry with another Virginie – it would be demeaning to return to that. Albert assured her that her star had not faded, that her time would come. A new palace would be built for her Miranda and her Ophelia; perhaps even here, at Northpoint itself. Once the manufactory was operating, Coak’s plantation would become the centre of economic activity and, on its heels, a Colonial Athens of the North. The Lady of the Lake, Cleopatra, Medea would not travel to their audience, but the audience to them!

  In the year of the women’s arrival, the estate had had barely fifteen black labourers serving out their indenture, and only a handful of permanent whites. By 1838, the presence of new, young, European blood, together with the spreading fame of Captain Shaw’s methods and philosophies, was attracting men from plantations across the island. But still, experienced cutters and craftsmen were too easily tempted to move on whenever they saw a better opportunity.

  At harvest and sowing – three of each a year on the Coak Estate – every uncultivated piece of land was taken up by makeshift houses. In the intervening months the land was emptied again. Shacks were easily dismantled and carried on the back to other plantations. Since emancipation, islanders had become like turtles, moving slowly under the weight of their shells, from pasture to pasture. If Coak’s dream of a great factory and Shaw’s of a flourishing, settled community were ever to be realised, it was essential that they provide year-round work and
put down stronger roots, deeper foundations, for their people.

  Elspeth played her part by overseeing the enhancing and improving of the old slave houses. She and her women set to work on cleaning up the stonework, clearing the weeds, putting down stone flooring and installing furniture. Shaw allowed the experiment to go ahead on the understanding that this was an investment the women themselves were making to the estate, and any expenses incurred were to be met by them. They had no actual money, naturally, but there was a notional wage rate, and owings were noted down in a book to be repaid at a later date, once their increasingly extended indenture had been served. No one was permitted to seek work elsewhere while indebted to Lord Coak.

  Even those men who had found a partner were tempted away by work elsewhere. Already, after four years, some who had fathered children cared little about leaving them and their mothers behind, making faint promises of return. Diana continued to insist that not being bound by a God-fearing marriage ceremony made this behaviour only too easy. Shaw, though not a man of religious orthodoxy, eventually concurred. The only option was to bring a minister up from Bridgetown – a journey few clerics were anxious to make, and fewer still were acceptable to the factor.

  Reverend Galloway attempted to make the journey in a polished gig, but the roads were in such a dire state that it gave up the ghost at Blackman’s Gully, obliging the minister to continue on foot, arriving short-tempered and outraged. “This estate,” he proclaimed the minute he set foot inside the gates, “has fallen by the wayside.” He told them that terrible things were heard in town of the morality – or lack of it – in this outpost. “We hear of concubinage, fornication, illegitimacy, and an aversion to hearing the word of God spoken.”

  “We are so far from town, Minister, and have so much work to do,” confessed Diana.

  “Nothing should inhibit a good Christian from making the journey to church, at the very least for the important rites of marriage, birth and burial.”

  “We still say our prayers, and our Captain here reads from the Bible whenever such a circumstance arrives. And so do I.”

  Her argument only incensed the good Reverend more. “As for your Captain, I very much doubt he has been schooled in the proper readings of the Good Book. In your own case, do you truly believe that a woman may represent God at such homespun rituals?”

  The man had arrived angry and became angrier as the day wore on. He could hardly believe his ears when Elspeth proposed he perform a general wedding rite to legally bind in the eyes of God those who were already cohabiting.

  “You wish me to give my blessing to your desecrations? I think not, Mistress.”

  It seemed the minister had come all this way merely to condemn and convict the lost flock to the fires of damnation. But Elspeth, used to the ways of recriminating clerics from her days with travelling players – when many such men attempted to drive them from town – had a strategy for just such a contingency. Settling the minister before a plate of fried chicken and eddoes and a large jugful of ale, she called Diana into a secret meeting in her chambers.

  “Reverend Galloway may find it beneath him to marry all those in want of it, but I think he shall wed at least one deserving couple. Who do you think would volunteer?”

  Diana shook her head sadly and replied that she had not observed much hunger for the sacraments amongst her sisters.

  “What about Jean Morton?”

  “Not ideal.”

  “Has she not been living harmoniously with one of the men new to us?”

  “Ben McGeoch. A Roman Papist, ma’m, and not one to keep it hid.”

  “Bessy Riddoch has two babes by her companion.”

  “Two different companions, tragically.”

  “Susan Millar?”

  “She partakes of no spirituality.”

  They could not between them come up with one couple who could be safely presented before Mr. Galloway. Those who had already borne children could hardly be portrayed as good Christians and Diana would not consent to lie – even by omission – before a man of God. But for her plan to succeed, Elspeth needed at least one marriageable couple.

  “That leaves you, Diana.”

  Diana stared at her mistress in astonishment. “And who is it you think I should wed? Shall I step outside and seize the first uncouth cutter I see?”

  “Come, come Diana. Everyone knows you and Robert Butcher are in love!”

  “In love! We are acquainted neighbours! We pray together and console one another.”

  “What more should respectable wedded partners do? Well perhaps something – but even that, I wonder, is not so far hidden beneath your piety. Mr. Butcher would make a fine husband I think. Consider your position in our little family here, Diana. The rest of us look to you, and look up to you – it would be a fine example to us all.”

  “Surely it is you, ma’m, we would follow in such matters.”

  Elspeth laughed and returned Diana’s question: “And to which uncouth cutter would you have me propose?”

  “I mean his lordship, of course.”

  Elspeth flapped away the question. “His lordship is not at home. And the more likely proposal I’d accept would be adoption.”

  “To care for and guide you – what more would a respectable woman need from a marriage?”

  Elspeth swept out of the kitchen, aware that she looked like her old childish self walking out peevishly on her mother. On the porch, she calmed herself, took stock and decided on a plan. She saw to it that the minister was served further rations of food and ale, and a flask of rum, then went in search of Robert Butcher. As she suspected, that gentleman needed less urging.

  One hour later, Diana, at turns glowering at Elspeth and beaming at Robert, stood by her fiancé – hastily splashed and combed – in front of Reverend Galloway, sweetened by a second jug of ale, and mollified now that he had an acceptable professional task to perform. The ceremony was officiated in the kitchen. When the godly man inquired why so humble a location had been chosen for the greatest of the Lord’s sacraments, Elspeth replied that the recipients of that rite were the humblest of His creations and a kitchen was an apt setting. Galloway nodded solemnly and, while he prepared himself spiritually for the ceremony, Elspeth went out and spoke to the men and women who, treating the occasion as a holiday, were roaming around the herb gardens and bluff. Emissaries were sent out to chattel-houses and canefields to bring the flock – furtively, behind the cover of the trees – to the shepherd. Elspeth, delighted with her ingenuity, gave bluster to Sir Walter Scott’s words:

  “Whoop, Jack! kiss Gillian the quicker

  Till she bloom like a rose, and a fig for the minister!”

  Earnest again in the kitchens, Mistress Baillie bade the Reverend stand with his back to the door, to benefit from the freshness of the draught. Those girls and men who had agreed to partake in the ruse placed themselves in the camouflage of the figs and overgrowth of the bluff between house and cove. In that way, they could see the minister without him seeing them. Those who had already coupled stood together; a few women stood between two men. Mothers held their sons and daughters aloft.

  Galloway intoned his lines like a hambone actor at the heartrending finale of a poorly-written melodrama, insisting first on testing Diana and Robert on Calvin’s catechism: “What is man’s chief felicity?”

  With much nudging and mumbling Diana succeeded in getting Robert through the examination. “I believe in de holy ghos’, holy chur’, cammunion o’ Sents and de rising again o’ we body, life everlasting.”

  Then, like Antony addressing the Romans, the minister projected to the audience of five – the fiancés themselves, Elspeth, with Mary Miller and Errol Braithewaite acting as guarantors. How much more drama he would have given his oration had he known that the true number of betrothed numbered nearly forty.

  “Dearly beloved brethren! We are here gathered together in the sight of God and in the face of His congregation to knit and join these parties in the honourable estat
e of matrimony, which was authorised …”

  On he went, repaying in full measure his rations and rum by selecting the longest text possible for such an occasion. “… sembably it is the wife’s duty to please and obey her husband in all things that be godly and honest, for she is in subjection …”

  Elspeth flinched at every movement in the trees, every squeak and giggle, beyond the open door. The old fool of a minister liked to embellish his rituals with much pacing and changing position, so by the end of the long afternoon he was directly facing the open door. Her heart leapt every time she saw a limb protrude from behind a tree, or an arm stretched up in a yawn, a child scampering from its hideout and being pulled back in with muted laughter. Galloway, mercifully, was much too transfixed by the power of the Word to observe any of these give-aways. “Whosoever polluteth and defileth the Temple of God, him God will destroy!”

  At last, Robert and Diana were invited to join hands, which she did poignantly, and he gratefully, and the ceremony was brought to an end. Whereupon the rest of the hidden community appeared as if from nowhere from under boughs and behind hillocks. The minister naturally expressed his surprise at this sudden congregation, likening it to the appearance of the lepers before Christ. Elspeth assured him that the solemnity of his words and the beauty of his voice had brought God-thirsty people to him, and that seemed to dispel any suspicions he might have had. In this way the rite of holy matrimony was administered to all generally – albeit, quite literally, behind the minister’s back.

  As a group lined the driveway to wave cheerio to their saviour, Bessy Riddoch smiled broadly and called out: