Redlegs

by Chris Dolan

  She still felt, from time to time, movement in her belly. Some twelve girls had been born and, though she continued to inspect each new arrival, the hope that she would find something of her old self and George in the produce of another woman’s womb became a madness she hid even from herself.

  The concert finished in the wee hours and, the next day, everyone had been granted a late start by Captain Shaw. Elspeth, who had not slept after sun-up for several years, was up before everyone and walked round her herb garden enjoying the freshness of the morning. She loved to watch the West Indian sun pop up out of the sea, like a black boy shimmying a palm. Returning, she came across the only other soul awake – one of the Edmondson boys. She hardly knew the family. Mr. Edmondson had been a slave of Albert’s before emancipation, and he and his family, living somewhere just beyond the cane fields, were always pleasant and respectful. She had seen the boy grow up, without ever discovering his name. Stumbling upon him this morning, she was shocked to feel her skin tingle and the hairs on her body unexpectedly bristle.

  He was handsome, with large eyes, broad shoulders and narrow hips. There was something gentle about him, despite the harsh work and long hours he endured. From time to time she had occasion to speak directly with him and he was polite without being submissive. Shaw, she knew, had no time for him, nor any of the Edmondson family. “In the old days I would have sold him,” he had told her. “The braggart has a mutinous look to him.”

  He was milking the small flock of black-belly sheep, which Elspeth herself had been rearing to provide cheese and meat for the estate. She smiled at him and he returned her greeting in kind. The morning getting hotter, Elspeth brought out a jug of water with arrowroot for him.

  “T’ank yuh mu’m.”

  “You’re very welcome. It must be hot work running around so after sheep.”

  “It is so.”

  “You don’t like the work?”

  “I do. They fine animals, an’ I know each one differen’ from the other.”

  As they talked, Elspeth couldn’t help but watch a single bead of sweat that had formed under his hairline, and wondered if coloureds’ sweat was actually darker than whites’. Perhaps like bracky water in a peaty, autumn burn. The drop sat on his smooth skin, perfectly in the middle of his brow, as if he were an Indian wearing an ebony gem. She reached into her sleeve and found her handkerchief. The boy, as if knowing what was on her mind, watched openly.

  “You have a stain here.”

  He didn’t lean towards her as she dabbed at his forehead, nor pulled back. He looked on as she took the handkerchief away and inspected the little stain his sweat had made on it. She smiled, and they went back to drinking their water, the Edmondson boy cupping a little in his hand for one of the lambs to lap.

  His skin looked to her at once soft and resilient, and his character was one of simple acceptance. Elspeth leaned towards him and gently kissed his cheek. So plump and soft, the fascination and beauty of his skin lay not in its colour but its youthfulness. The lad smiled happily at her, but remained seated on his felled tree-trunk, the little sheep looking up at her. She moved to kiss his mouth, but the boy leaned gently aside and, still smiling, left.

  Had he hit her, the blow would have been less painful. She would have preferred that he’d cried out for his father or Captain Shaw, rather than walk away unperturbed, imperious in his silence.

  “Come back here!”

  He turned and stopped, but there was no hesitation about him. Nor any hint of embarrassment.

  “Obliged t’ yuh fuh the water.”

  Elspeth sat alone on the trunk he had vacated. Had anyone passed by, they would have seen nothing amiss. The smile for the boy lay frozen on her face, and not even a shaking hand betrayed the tumult and nausea that raged inside her.

  She was still young enough – not many would have guessed that she had just passed thirty. Her hair was still thick and dark, and her figure trim, but the sheen had gone from her tresses and skin. She was aware of hunching her shoulders a little – the way she used to, bending into the driving rain of her nearly-forgotten early life. To the boy, however, she was an old maid.

  It was loneliness, yoked to the burden of authority and responsibility, that had caused her aberration with the black boy. Throughout the whole Douglas case she had heard Shaw and Diana expound that the desire which attracted different races one to another was a seed planted by the devil, as unnatural as a stallion studding a cow. She herself had long believed the same. Nonie and Isabella had told stories, heard third-hand, about women who had lain with black men: the results differed depending on the hour and how much Dalby’s Turbo they had drunk. Either it was a glory surpassing all earthly expectations, or a brutish affair. The results of it could be anything from a girl’s immediate conversion to the world of the negro – some, it was said, even leaving for Africa at once on trade ships – or a life of regret, pain and dissatisfaction. As for Shaw’s and Diana’s dire warnings of the offspring of such unions, she knew them to be his lies and her ignorance. Bridgetown was full of half-caste children. If a planter could produce a healthy child with a black maid, then a Scots plough-girl could do the same with a darkie cutter. The only true divisions were social – and she should have considered that before acting so impetuously with the boy.

  It was not her colour that repelled him. It was her age. And, she intuited, her position in their shared society. Nothing in his reaction suggested that he was afraid of her; rather he disliked the impression she must have given of presumption. She was the lady planter, he a lowly peasant. Her desires were dictates, his of less significance. The boy’s shrug was like Henry’s disinterested rescue: he could have saved George and her, or not. The only reason he did was because it was part of his duties. It was not a duty of the Edmondson boy to reciprocate his mistress’s cooings.

  And anyway she was too old for him. Her life, it seemed, was like the growth of the fig tree before her, its branches extending, ageing imperceptibly, until they reached the ground and disappeared.

  A month later, the boy left both the estate’s employ and his family home. Shaw didn’t ask why – he was pleased enough to be rid of him, and the boy himself made no accusations as she had feared, but left quietly. His father sent along a younger brother to replace the older, making no mention of the reason for the substitution. Elspeth overheard Eliza Morton saying that she saw the boy leaving. “Stravaigin’ doon the pathway he was, a wee sack slung o’er his back, like Dick Whittington. I cried efter him, ‘Ye leavin’ us, Francie?’ but he jus’ kept on along the way.”

  Francie. Elspeth only discovered his name in retrospect.

  A meeting was held in the autumn of 1844 to discuss the issue of letters. Not a word had been heard from Scotland for eight years. Not everyone attended: Martha Glover, Elizabeth Johnstone and Jean Homes had nobody left at home to hear from. Others, like Bessy and Susan, had no wish to make contact with their waster fathers, put-upon mothers and already forgotten siblings, but they came along anyway, always keen for a little socialising.

  For the rest the pain of their families’ silence was keenly felt – and in waves, experienced, strangely, by all of them at the same times. The first years were the worst. They had expected a flood of letters – half-illiterate scribbled notes, pages dictated to a minister or clever sibling. Receiving no word of reply was like having gone deaf.

  “I feel as if I’ve deed an naebody’s came to my funeral,” Jean Malcolm opened the proceedings.

  When it was first explained to them that communication between continents was at best slow, at worst, dead-slow-and-stop, they had steeled themselves and waited patiently. The heavy work, setting up homes, new liaisons with menfolk and the offspring that resulted from them – it all dampened their need to hear from home. But on special occasions – the first baby born at Northpoint, the first child death, Reverand Galloway’s marriage ceremony, the laying of the foundations of the manufactory – they all took up their pens again or rushed to Di
ana, and were dismayed all over again at the lack of reply.

  “These are strange times in the old world and the new,” said Captain Shaw at the gathering. “People move at a moment’s notice from one farm to another, or from the country to the town. It’s worse there than here.”

  “They cannae a’ flitted!”

  “Lady Elspeth gets letters often enough from the Laird!”

  Elspeth saw the injustice, but also understood the difference between a lord of the realm dispatching personal communications alongside important business documents from offices and ships, and farmers’ notes inaccurately addressed and delivered to haphazard quaysides. She said nothing, but decided to urge Albert on his next visit to make direct contact with old Roseneath and search for the women’s letters.

  “Your letters are taken to Carlisle Bay,” Shaw was explaining, “and sent by the soonest boat to Greenock – a service for which, mind, the estate does not charge yuh.”

  “Ach, ye’ll find a way, Captain, soon enough,” Mary Miller shouted.

  The factor ignored her: “As for your kin collecting the papers from the port, I cannot be held responsible. It’s a good distance from there to your parish. Perhaps there is no one to make the journey.”

  “My faither visits regular!” protested one woman.

  “Ma brither was posted in Greenock!”

  “That was some time ago, Jean Homes. Perhaps his posting has changed.”

  “This failure to keep us in touch with our families must lie at the feet of the estate, captain. On behalf of us all I plead with you to correct the deficiency.” Diana was not usually the one to challenge Shaw, but both she and Mary Miller had been changed women of late. Mary had produced a child a year for the last four years. Mary and Errol Braithwaite were the first couple wed by Diana Moore in a ceremony memorised from Reverand Galloway at her own marriage. Mary’s firstborn, Nan, named for her maternal grandmother, appeared less than six months later. A boisterous child now, Nan was the light of Mary’s and Errol’s lives: a snowy-skinned, lively, laughing girl, her natural naughtiness got her into trouble with everyone around her, and they all shook their fingers at her without being able to hide the delight in their eyes.

  After nearly five years of trying, Diana too found that God had granted her a child of her own. She had all but surrendered hope, submitting to His decision that she serve the children of others rather than bear one herself. But Robert Butcher had proved, for an older and staunchly religious man, keen on the duty to multiply – an enthusiasm that had shocked Diana in the early years of their marriage. Pregnancy turned the serious scribe and efficient midwife into a blushing bride, less harsh with her words, sometimes even verging on the skittish. She swelled up more than any of the other woman – a comical sight, her height not much more now than her breadth – but continued with her duties, attending birthings and conducting her own make-do-and-mend baptisms and churching of mothers. She nursed sickly children, and watched, tormented, as some of them died. She applied remedies – of her own concoction, and others learned from Annie and Dainty and even the Captain, who was very knowledgeable in the botany of the island – to the ill, and sorrowfully sped on their way to their Maker babes whose lives would not have been worth the living, or whose deaths, unaided, would have been too much to bear. But with her own babe in her belly the world seemed a brighter, more hopeful place.

  She remained the factor’s closest confidante amongst the women – while she and Nathanial Wycombe, the nearest thing to a “friend” the oaken captain had, were mutual adversaries – but, in her new condition, found it easier to confront him on a more equal footing.

  “It’s hardly within my powers, Diana Moore, to correct the ineptitudes of your families, let alone take responsibility for the colonial mailing services.”

  The women were irked by his manner, but could hardly fault his logic. In any case, the attention of many of them was taken up by squabbling, playing or crying children who found the meeting tedious.

  “However, I have some encouraging news regarding this issue,” Shaw went on, taking a letter from Lord Coak from his pocket. His lordship at that time was spending weeks in a row at Bridgetown, engaged in conferences with the House of Assembly and the Governor’s office, discussing his new manufactory.

  “A new railway is planned to connect the west of Scotland with both London and the coast. Lord Coak is actively involved and putting his weight, and some money, behind the early realisation of the laying of track. Such a development will revolutionise post-carrying. There are even plans – which again, Roseneythe Estate is actively fostering – to build a railway here in Barbados. Hold your patience, ladies, and soon the old Caledonia and the new will be like neighbouring parishes.”

  Taking courage from the success amongst the women for her marriage rites based on Reverend Galloway’s service, Diana proceeded to elaborate a further ceremony for baptisms. Once she had midwifed the mother and presented the child to its father – if he were still on the estate – she recited, to the assembled community, prayers and readings taken from the Bible, a few old prayer books, and memory.

  “The Saviour will work in the hearts of His Elect… Prevail against Satan. Obtain the Victory.” To which everyone responded, “So be it!”

  But for funerals there were no words. When the first of their own number passed away – Elizabeth Johnstone, giving birth to little Victoria, then Jean Malcolm of some slow wasting disease, howling her way distressingly to the grave – Diana led the mourners to the graves dug by their husbands, but said nothing. She had been to funerals in Scotland, but could recall only a black, blank silence. If any words were ever spoken, Diana could not remember them. Nor could she find any appropriate prayers in her books and, although there were pertinent verses in the Bible, she felt that silence was all she was capable of. When a child died, she was left utterly wordless.

  Several babes had been born – to Mary Lloyd and Jean Malcolm among others – with debilitating symptoms. Small, weak, and either silent as the grave or in a constant scream, the children looked misshapen and discoloured. Not all the ailing babes were the result of transgression. Some were as fair as a ginger-lily petal; some ghastly pale, like the rotting flesh of flying fish washed up on the cove. The more openly expressed view of these tragedies was that they were the vicious effect of the sun and climate.

  Diana’s instinct was to nurse and fortify them all. But the Captain counselled otherwise. He knew more of life in the tropics, and had become a widely acclaimed expert on heredity. “Protracting these lives in vain is an act of cruelty, Diana Moore. To infant and mother alike.”

  The women – even those who had reproduced successfully – began to worry that they were not adaptable to the rearing of offspring in this hot world. Especially in the case of sons, whose mortality was especially high. Miscarriages and stillbirths – as if the infants were aborting themselves rather than be born in the wrong place. Babes who screamed their way into life, and just as quickly wailed themselves into oblivion. Daughters and sons who reached six months or a year, or even four, seemingly healthily and happily, suddenly gave up the ghost, giving no explanation for their departure.

  In private, stricken with grief and fear, many whispered the influence of Annie Oyo or Dainty. At the height of their distress, some accused them outright of being witches. Or they blamed black labourers for poisoning their future competitors. All secretly wondered if God was not punishing them for leaving their natural homeland behind.

  After much thought and prayer, Diana accepted the wisdom of Captain Shaw. She continued to struggle with her conscience: would the good Lord create a spark of life in a being detestable to Him? The factor reminded her, “We live in a fallen world, Diana. It is our duty to make judgements and take steps to return us to God’s original intentions.”

  Children who were only slightly afflicted Diana ministered with ointments prepared from hollyhock and physick nut, sometimes with success. When a woman confessed to fornication w
ith a black fieldhand, she dispensed a brew of fringigo and papaya and tree of life which together had an abortifacient effect, rather than see the patient give birth to a monster. The medicine either rid the belly of the regrettable issue or the infant was born dead. Often, God in His mercy allowed the woman He was punishing to eject the child unassisted by Diana, for which she was always grateful.

  The corpses of these little unfortunates were disposed of quickly and without fuss. The child was taken from the mother’s side at night, and spirited away. No one knew where, and no one asked. Diana would enter, say a prayer with the household, judge her moment, and wrap the corpse in a sheet. Only occasionally did a woman protest, but was silenced by her family. The midwife would slip out and disappear with her bundle into the night. The idea arose that Diana placed the poor mites in baskets which she set on the sea to carry them home.

  All the while Diana herself prayed for a normal partition for her own child, and dreamed of a boy or a girl – she did not care which – returning with her to old Roseneath. She imagined her aged mother’s eyes shining with love for her grandchild and her father dangling the bairn on his knee. These were the dreams that sustained her through her demanding partnership with Captain Shaw, and gave her the strength to endure many sad days.

  In 1845, nearly fifteen years after Elspeth’s removal from Garrison to Northpoint, Moira Campbell’s second child passed suddenly away. The eighteen surviving women, plus some ten or twelve of their daughters old enough to attend, stood the following morning in silence at the top of the bluff to pray for the laddie’s soul. The boy’s father – Bernhard, a solid placid man – took the loss badly. He had produced to date three strapping daughters but not yet a single son. The child, Christened Georg, spelled in the father’s Germanic way, was as peaceful and sweet as Bernhard himself. Brown-haired and green-eyed, he should have grown into just the kind of able, biddable man Roseneythe sorely needed.