Redlegs

by Chris Dolan

  At last, and to the relief of most, the factor came out quickly and strongly on Diana’s side. She was, he proclaimed, the most decent, pious and dependable of ladies. She had worked loyally and steadfastly for over a decade, and her propriety and righteousness were not to be questioned. He defended her right – a right granted by his own authority – to inform mothers of the disposal of remains as she saw fit in each circumstance. Given Martha Glover’s evident anguish at the loss of her child, Diana had acted properly, and out of a humane desire not to cause the lady any further upset. He reminded them all of the difficulty of producing and nurturing a successful species, made in their own image, under inhospitable and peculiar climactic conditions. Those who wanted the best for themselves and their families must bide by the rules he and Diana set.

  In between the cheerless transgressions with Shaw were rich years for Roseneythe, but silent ones for Elspeth. She looked into herself, trying to pull the fading memories back from a void inside her. The shape and motion of the Alba; the dressing-rooms of The Lyric; the countenance of her darling George Lisle. She could no longer imagine the face of the daughter she was meant to have, and began to lose faith in the hope that that child would ever emerge even from another woman’s belly.

  Roseneythe Estate

  1845

  Father. Mother.

  Perhaps this news will move you to speak.

  I had hoped to write with good news, a first grandchild. However the good Lord has decreed I am not adequate for such reward.

  Silence.

  Mother, is that still all you offer me? Am I an evil woman, Father? Why do you hold your tongue?

  The Lord raiseth me up and casteth me down. He tore the life out of my womb with such infliction of pain that I hoped the searing would continue to my heart. I feel now I could rip it out of my breast with my bare hands.

  My child would have been an honourable boy – fruit of a good man. No taint of the lust and stupidity and degradation the majority of our number have shown here. But I held no ceremony for him. I took him this morning, before the sun began its daily scorching of us, and planted him with the outcast bairns. If he was so unacceptable in the eyes of God, then so he shall be in the eyes of the world. Captain Shaw came with me – we alone know the location of our local Purgatory. He is the only one who understands the torture I suffer. I begin to feel the fury he has for our Redeemer.

  What do you say to that, Father? Your devout daughter tempted to howl curses at the heavens.

  I shall never go home now. I have no wish to. You do not want me there though I do not want to be here. I will continue with the profession I have assumed here. From this day onwards I will do my duty as you taught me – you, parents who refuse to speak to their only daughter, who shun me as Christ Himself now does. I will do as I am instructed by my superiors. That is what I have been schooled that the Lord expects of me. Let us put Him to the test.

  I am surrounded by silence – within me and without. How is it you cannot answer your only daughter when she calls out in anguish to you? Do you care so little?

  Diana Moore

  Recommencement of Captain R. Shaw’s Disclosure

  I left off my journal some years ago overtaken by the sudden & momentous work at the Coak Estate at Northpoint. The record of my Project here is fully reported & available for those who wish to study my method. Were it not for my successes – & some inevitable setbacks – I might have found time to elaborate on these rough notes of my more Personal life. As it is I have only a few hours to bring up to date the story that I began nearly two decades ago.

  I found myself paying-work for a while on the estate of the admirable Mister Barclay. This planter had interests beside those of sugar & crop. He had made a deal of money from trading in slaves when such a profession was still permitted. He had invested in the island of Barbuda in the management of stud farms for the breeding of slaves. He knew how much of Whydah could be mixed with Congolese to produce a tall strong worker who yet was not rebellious & did not eat too much.

  Through study & practice I now know all there is to know about the African. I know that the Wolof & Mandingo are to be avoided – that they have knowledge that is not Natural & should not spring from behind dead eyes. The Congolese – despite a bearing blacker than all other Africans – are strong – indifferent to fatigue – tranquil & born to serve. They take no heed of our world so that all is balanced in theirs. Their distaff are full-breasted & breed readily. The best produce will be the offspring of a Whydah bitch & Cormantine bull. The other way around & you result a strong & healthy cub – but prone to be sullen.

  I say again – I do not despise the Negro. The meek shall inherit the Earth. I take the words of the Good Book as they are written undiluted. By mixing his blood we have robbed the African of his innate weakness which looks to us like idiocy. It only does so because the Negro’s time has not yet come – nor will it for many a generation & perhaps never now that we have toyed & interfered with him. Kinmont saw in the passivity of the darkie no less than our Saviour’s own mildness & the least of His creations who shall be suffered unto Him. The Negro’s ascension will undoubtedly take place in the Last Age – some time off yet I trust. Least until I have terminated with this damned Disclosure.

  I heard that a young man in the northern Parish of St. Lucy was struggling to maintain his plantation. I had long since relinquished ambitions to own a plantation or business of my own – dedicating myself now to a greater cause. An Estate under the management of an unapprised young newcomer – he was reported to be no more than a lad – was the perfect place for me to practice my art & recent profession. I journeyed to the Parish to meet this man – or, in actual fact, boy. My life has been tarnished since squeezing out of my mothers thighs, by runts & shrunken striplings. I do not believe that I have ever encountered such a confused & lost Soul. It was clear that my very presence frightened the girlish little milksop – a pederast I took him of – a fucker of pups’ arses – a pintle-licker – & an English pouffe. He was introduced to me by his father – who on the contrare was a manly gentleman – as Mister Albert Cox. Once the father had agreed my conditions & secured my services I built a house for myself on the Plantation. Only in one particular did the older man veer from the path of Truth – though he was still frank.

  “From this day on Master Shaw you shall call my son Lord Coak.”

  “I cannot see how I can sir,” quoth I, “unless it be the legitimate Truth.”

  “Well it is & it isn’t,” said he. “This is a New World, Shaw, where what went before is of little use to us. Perchance my son is not a Lord in England but peradventure he may still be one in the Colonies. He will get his work done faster & better with that Title hanging from his hat. So I think will you.”

  “I am not sure Mister Cox – if that not be too lowly a denomination for you – that I am convinced by your argument.”

  “I have money, Shaw. Enough of it and made by my own wits to have less need of a sobriquet. But you, man – have you never been denied something you knew in your heart was yours by right?” I need hardly put in writing here what I answered to that!

  “I have done my investigations on you, Shaw, & taken up your references. It has come to my attention that – were the world in the right order – you ought by now to be a Captain in the Colonial Militia. Then a Captain you are here – & my son a Lord.”

  Then he added an afterthought that I considered most wise & proved to me the man’s intelligence. “For what,” quo he, “is a lie but the truth in masquerade?”

  At once I saw the sense of his reasoning but I must confess that for nigh forty year since each time I uttered the word “lord” to that perverted English fop it stuck deep & hard in my craw.

  It so happened that only weeks after my inauguration at the estate of Lord Coak – in the year eighteen hundred & fifteen – that our injudicious Assembly passed the slave registry bill – a demand that all Owners notify the government of the number – age – sex
– & duties of their stock – to ensure that none were still engaging in the now illegal business of buying & selling slaves. The poor Negroes & indentured coloureds – being low in education & misinformed by Mischievous elements – mistook the purpose of this act & thought that they had been set free.

  When Freedom was long in coming – though – as we are witnessing now – they have no gift for Freedom – they supposed that they had been cheated of their emancipation. A riot broke out on various Plantations – for the most part in the southern regions where I had worked with Mr. Barclay. Indeed I had met the coloured Francklyn who was one of the organisers of the insurrection & have seen at close quarters the slave Bussa.

  I played my active part in the quelling of the bloodthirsty Mutiny & in the Emergency. I was permitted to re-enlist as a Militia soldier. The quelling of the slaves took no more than a few days but long enough for these half-made men living unnaturally in a foreign land to make some great destruction. After the successful subjection of the mutineers there followed several months of tracking down & testifying against the perpetrators of the crimes that were committed. I myself indicted over eighty men & some twelve women & testified at the hearings of nearly fifty. I attended as many of the Hangings as I could – not because I derived any pleasure from such woefull scenes – but because it is important that we are honest & direct in our actions & in the consequences of our actions. At each hearing I pleaded for mercy on behalf of these sad Souls & argued for their deportation to the dark Continent of Africa. That Continent will not always be dark. Once it has its children back again – & the Natural harmony of things restored – generations in the future will look to that great yet primitive land & will see Christ’s light shining from its depths. I am not ashamed to say that I wept openly at each & every Execution. I took but one pleasure when the Field Marshals of the Militia – albeit tardily – awarded me the Title Captain and that was that; henceforth Lord Albert was the only liar at Northpoint.

  Thereafter I continued to work diligently for Coak – but still managed to read & discuss great issues with like-minded people. As Nancy once said – though that sullied ethiopic concubine is the last person from whom I should take counsel – Studdiation is better than Eddication. I watched & I observed & I learned.

  The cause of emancipation only got worse & worse & the very arts in which I had been trained were seemingly to become redundant. Then – on the morning of a week after the dreadfull storm – a woman stumbled half-dead onto my land & fell into my arms. She was torn & ragged – her hair a bird’s nest & her jacket & dress sundered so that she showed nearly a full breast. Had the pair of them flopped out it would have been more fitting – for this woman augured not one but two new beginnings in my life.

  I can barely press on with this Disclosure for my hand shakes. At the memory of her body falling into mine – most surely – & of the gentle milky pap she displayed – surely again. But I tremble more at the memory of what she proposed to me & how the last cloud from my philosophical sky evaporated. That lady – quite unwittingly – brought all my training & experience back to life & uncovered for me the project to which I was born.

  ’Twas she that introduced me to my Great Work. She who proposed we bring a brood of females from Scotland & mate them with ready-leathered colonial stock. As Mr. Barclay taught me – all breeding must be undertaken through the female line. Soon I had my very own flock to cultivate at Roseneythe. A solid Lowland Scots variety on which to graft the best of the Northern Races. (The Lowlander is a dependable mongrel – he keeps a hung head & a decently lowered eye.)

  Why shouldn’t the fundaments of my Science be applied to the European as much to the African? The savage it is true – being less developed – is the most easily & soonest distilled. But I have proved the Creating & Managing of bloodlines is no less Successfull in the White race.

  My greatest aggravation – as it will have been to all Men of Science & Spirit – is the waywardness of women. The bitch of the Scotch race divides her time twixt psalming & lifting a leg. I should have calculated that few of them could resist guddling tween furzy banks for a great black trout. Tupping a darkie would aye be fine sport for them. No matter. Enough will remain Loyal to my Ambitions to create their New Caledonia.

  I must put this pen down – for the shaking will not stop. Trembling still at the memory of the day that body fell into mine & of the gentle milky tit. At how she made my Destiny clear. It trembles too with Anger. Were it not for the slack-pintled tinsel-Laird (ne’er indeed – & mayhaps his Father knew it – was a Cox so falsely named!) & his peering & love of recitations – the success you see around you would have been plain a generation back. The Devil take them both – the onanistic Planter & the schismatic wench Bathsheba.

  X

  Twenty-three years after George was blown away in the Storm, Elspeth finally gazed on the chestnut-bright eyes and mild countenance of a newborn girl, and recognised at once the combined spirit of George Lisle and her own blithe, younger self. She couldn’t quite say why but perhaps because the rain was heavy that night and the wind powerful, because the child was one of the Miller clan who reminded Elspeth of her own sisters and father and aunts, she felt this child was going to be special to her. Or perhaps it was because the colours that night in her dreams – while Bathsheba was being born in a chattel-house – were especially intense and fast-moving. And then, in the morning, when she first saw her, she seemed to know her already. Bathsheba Miller she was christened, but it was Elspeth herself who gave her her pet name, the Rain Child.

  The birth followed another great event, less than a year before, in 1853, the grand opening of Lord Coak’s magnificent Sugar Manufactory. It had been twenty-five years in planning, taken fifteen years to build and four more to achieve its full, astonishing, potential. Of the most modern design, it produced an extra ton of semi-processed sugar per acre than any Barbadian plantation had managed before. It recovered three-quarters more sucrose and muscovado, and a higher grade of massecuite. It could single crush, double crush, and triple dilute if necessary. Whatever the market demanded. The whole process was overseen by Gideón Brazos, under Mr. Shaw’s authority.

  Brazos was brought from Cuba, procured together with the machinery design. He was a Spanish-speaking quadroon – neither of which circumstances was agreeable to Captain Shaw. Quadroons were confused and above themselves, and the Spanish language brought elements of Popery and slothfulness. Brazos showed signs of having Hausa blood, an arrogant tribe. The planter assured his factor that Brazos was a slave from a country which still respected the old traditions, and would be transferred to Barbados on the basis of indenture. They needed someone who knew how to run a refinery, who understood the modern techniques so novel to Lord Coak and Captain Shaw. To Gideón Brazos, such crafts were as familiar as the palms of his cinnamon hands.

  They also bought a woman in Cuba to be his mate. Shaw instructed Coak how to choose such a companion with care, sending him detailed notes on physical and mental signs to look out for, and questions to ask owners concerning the women’s personal history and records. Coak finally selected Golondrina Segunda, a woman in her settled mid-thirties, of reasonably pure Whydah blood. Nearly a decade older than Brazos, a mother already and therefore schooled in the ways of the world. It was decided not to have her accompanied by her issue as they would take up too much of her time, and interfere with her relationship with Brazos.

  Since the launch of the factory Elspeth’s nights had been disturbed by sudden releases of hissing steam, the distant trundle of carts in the morning, men shouting in English and Spanish, women in Scots. Her days were rearranged to suit the new production. Mealtimes were shorter, concerts truncated or cancelled, and the house during all daylight hours, it seemed, emptied of people. The silence was made all the more intense by the clatter and rumble echoing down the driveway.

  The factory brought a renewed sense of industry and increased prosperity to Roseneythe. The pistons pumped away from early in the morn
ing till late at night, eating up wood at a tremendous rate. Carts and drays hauled trunks of trees up the driveway. Coak and Shaw saw to it that all the supplies needed to feed the monster were furnished by the estate itself – Coak’s lands bordering a gully thickly wooded with mahogany, fig and jacaranda trees, and what was left of the old Scots birches – freeing Roseneythe almost completely from dependency on the rest of the island. Only the shippers’ agents arrived at the gates in the mornings after harvest to transport product to the ports around Bridgetown.

  In the time of the factory, Elspeth had less to do while everybody else worked doubly hard. Mary and Diana still referred to her in matters of import, but were adept now at running the big house and the women’s lives by themselves. The extra labour created by adding sugar refining to the estate’s interests meant that, for a while, the workforce was at full complement. Lord Coak would not hear of his wife taking anything to do with the dusty and dangerous operations that went on in the new building, positioned at the other side of the driveway from the house, near to the estate gates. Lady Elspeth only ever saw the decayed interior of the factory many years after its closure.

  The Rain Chile’s maturing coincided with the time of the factory. Born when her mother – Nan, the robust but unruly daughter of Mary Miller – was yet to reach sixteen, Bathsheba was prematurely condemned while still in the womb. However, the combined circumstances of the new factory, the clean smir on the night of her birth, and the girl’s own delicate beauty, obliterated all previous omens. Nan was accepted back into the community and her daughter quickly became a favourite.