Redlegs

by Chris Dolan

  At nine o’clock Elspeth struck the gong in the hallway of the big house announcing that the evening’s entertainment was about to start. She appeared tired and perhaps a little stern, but said nothing that told of any argument or mishap the previous evening. Captain Shaw was nowhere to be seen and the rumours of his rendezvous with Lady Coak had all but died away during the day.

  She wore a heavy brocade dress of dark colours, as worn by ladies a little younger in town. Within moments of her disappearing back inside the house people arrived from all directions. They stood outside in groups, talking quietly, until Diana Moore arrived and led the way in. They sat down at tables laden with bowls of fried breadfruit and fresh-cut mango, jugs of mauby and ale, specially brought in for the occasion, sliced eddoes, cakes made by Martha Glover’s girls. For the second night in a row all waited with bated breath for Bathsheba Miller to arrive. Lord Coak was brought into the room, supported on one side by Elspeth, Moira Campbell’s son taking his other arm. Elspeth lit the candles on the birthday cake when it was brought out from the kitchen to the usual applause. Seven candles, one for each decade. Elspeth had only reached the fifth candle when the door opened. Everyone turned, expecting Bathsheba, but instead watched Captain Shaw and Nathanial Wycombe enter and take seats at the back of the room.

  Shaw had never attended these ceremonies, and his presence could only mean turmoil ahead, but there was nothing to be done except to proceed with the concert. Diana, who had always been Mistress of Ceremonies, stood in front of the Lyric’s backcloth and announced the evening’s proceedings to have begun.

  “Take your glasses and rest your feet. There’s fine food on its way and entertainment until, as ever, we reach claro clarum!”

  Everyone cheered and helped themselves liberally to jugs of ale while Diana introduced each act. Mary Fairweather’s daughter, Grace, gave her rendition of “Long, Long the Night”, as taught to her by her departed mother. Her sister Sarah recited Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damn spot!” soliloquy. A group of children performed infantile songs, “Draw a Bucket o’ Water” and “Jessamine”. Diana gave a rendition of Burns’ “The Cottar’s Saturday Night”, and Jane Alexander, blushing, “The Flower o’ Dumblane”:

  “She’s modest as ony and blithe as she’s bonnie,

  For guileless simplicity marks her its ain….”

  Bessy Riddoch each year suggested ruder verses, never with success, being made to speak some poem in a more respectable vein.

  “I’m o’er young to marry yet

  I’m o’er young – t’wad be a sin

  To tak me frae my mammy yet.”

  Robert Butcher entertained the room with his whistle-playing. This year he had recruited James, son of Jean Morton and Ben McGeoch, and two of the newer men, to accompany him on an assortment of home-made drums, and together they managed to lift everyone’s spirits with their lively versions of sea shanties and schottisches.

  During the band’s performance, Bathsheba entered quietly. Those nearest the door caught a glimpse of Golondrina and Gideón taking their leave of her and continuing to stand outside as the door closed. The girl had a long, woollen shawl draped round her shoulders, clasped tightly at the neck, but under it – to everyone’s relief – they could glimpse Elspeth’s precious old dress. Everyone relaxed a little, stamping their feet to “The 24th May” and “Want One Shilling” in time to the drums and penny-whistle. Diana introduced Errol Sarjant who sang the same wassail songs he sang every year, but he did it in such a deep and melodic voice that nobody minded. By the time Bathsheba was called to take her place before them all of the ale had been drunk and Shaw had allowed the last of the flagons of special rum to be opened.

  Walking to the front, her eyes met Elspeth’s, and each of them gave the other a little smile. The trick of wearing her dress, but covering herself with the shawl – its subtle tawny and silver hues extracted by Nan and Mary from lily and agave leaves matching the ivory of the Parisian muslin – placated Elspeth. As ever, she had managed to obliterate the memory of a rough night with Shaw from her mind but, also as ever, was left feeling agitated. The incident with Bathsheba and Coak she had calculated, after much thought, was a trifle. The girl had merely loosened her neck ties a little because she was nervous and hot. Now Elspeth just wanted Bathsheba’s recital – however she performed it – to be over. If she had criticisms to make they could wait for a day or two until all the excitement had died down.

  After a faltering start, Bathsheba found her rhythm and voice and recited her poem admirably.

  “Bonnets and spears and bended bows;

  On right, on left, above, below,

  Sprung up at once the lurking foe.”

  Her voice raised and dipped, and she strode from side to side. The older women smiled at her accent – Scottish names mispronounced, phrases sung with Colonial languor.

  “From Vennachar in silver breaks,

  Sweeps through the plain, and ceaseless mines

  On Bochastle the mouldering lines,

  Where Rome, the Empress of the world,

  Of yore her eagle wings unfurl’d.”

  Vennachar came out as Venyacuh, Bochastle became Bucyastelle. Some of her definite articles were pronounced “de” in the local way. Her staccato vowels and cadenced consonants gave a whole new tempo and fascination to the tale. The story itself had never been of great relevance to the audience, not even those born in Scotland, speaking as it did of people unknown and events unclear to them. It had always been Elspeth’s performance they had enjoyed – how she strutted and clutched her breast, became apparently genuinely distressed, and then exultant, whispering one moment, roaring the next. Bathsheba’s dramatic interpretation could not approach the trained actress’s, yet it lulled them into a story that seemed more personal and closer to them all.

  “Like dew on de mountain,

  Foam on de river,

  Like bubble of de fountain,

  Thou ar’ gone, and fuh ever!”

  She finished on a long, quiet note, and the audience responded in kind – a moment’s lull before their applause. Not the same clamour and shouts, the accolades that greeted Elspeth’s performances, but a long, steady clapping. Tears of sentiment welled in the eyes of the audience while Bathsheba smiled and bowed. Elspeth beamed warmly at her. Whatever expectations there had been of disruption and infighting were forgotten as the community relaxed into the conviviality of the night. Shaw’s presence had come to nothing. Bathsheba’s performance had righted any simmering wrongs. The Captain himself filled folks’ cups and glasses with large measures of rum and the hall sung with chatter and laughter while the elder women of the tribe went to the kitchen to prepare the main meal.

  The number of original immigrants who traditionally cooked and served the meal had been reduced from twenty to fifteen – Mary Murray, Jean Malcolm and Mary Lloyd, in 1851, ’53 and ’67, had joined their deceased sisters, by way of rheums and dropsies, but left behind a gaggle of children and grandchildren. Fifteen could fit into the kitchen more easily than twenty had before. Normally, Elspeth helped too, but this year it was felt that Bathsheba should maintain the tradition of the Lady of the Lake preparing and serving the meal.

  The door was always bolted against the revellers outside, for the ladies shed the best dresses they wore for the party and worked in the hot kitchen in their shifts to avoid any staining. The older they had grown the more bawdy their humour had become – even Diana had let her standards fall and laughed at the jokes her colleagues made at one another’s expense.

  “Is it ony wunner Malcolm will na come near me till he’s fou? It’s only when he sees double he thinks he has hands enough to gang round me.”

  “Away wi’ you, Jeannie. You’re no sae hefty, an’ onyway you’ve still a coggie under your jupes. It’s a’ they care about.”

  “I’d fondle ye myself, Jean, if I buttoned up different.”

  Nan handed Bathsheba an apron to put on over Elspeth’s fine dress and her fresh-washed sh
awl. Margaret Lloyd, her tumbler filled by Susan Millar, started up with a bawdy song from the old country.

  “John Anderson, my jo, John

  When first that ye began

  Ye had a good tail-tree as ony other man.”

  The women’s laughter crashed around her as loud as the old pistons from the closed-down factory.

  “But now it’s waxen wan, John,

  and wrinkles to and fro.”

  Bessy banged her spoon against the side of the bubbling pot of coocoo mash in time with the song. Susan – her flaxen hair of old turned to white and her angular face thinner than ever – sniggered into the oven where trays of salt-bread were toasting. Mary Fairweather’s hair was near as orange as it had ever been, but her plain face wrinkled like dried mango. Mary Riach, blinder than ever now, peered towards the source of the voices and waved her butter-pat in the air. Diana shook her head in disapproval, but couldn’t help from smiling, nor stop herself from joining in with the rest of them on the last line:

  “I’m twa-gae-ups for ae gae-down

  John Anderson, my jo!”

  When the laughter had died down, Diana tried to put the company in a higher frame of mind, chanting – for she had little voice for music – as metrically as she could, Burns’ toast to the lasses:

  “There’s nocht a care on ev’ry han’

  In ev’ry hour that passes-O

  What signifies the life o’ man,

  ’Twere na for the lasses-O?”

  But Bessy had another lyric to accompany the same melody.

  “Green grow the rashes O

  Green grow the rashes O

  The lasses they hae wimble bores,

  The widows they hae gashes O.”

  The women laid down their ashets of roasted eddoes and sweet potatoes, pulled themselves up to their full height – in their bare soles and shifts, not much taller than they were wide – and a contest broke out between the differing versions of the song. Nothing personal or angry about the competition, each side trying to outsing the other. Diana’s version, however, did not lend itself to fulllunged bellowing, whereas the coarser edition most certainly did. One by one her followers ran for cover under the all-out attack of their opponents, betrayed the cause and – with a whoop and a rise in lusty loudness – joined the enemy. Diana valiantly struggled on for a stanza or two before seeing the battle lost and with great good humour crossing the divide herself, mumbling the vulgar words, keeping a tolerant smile on her face.

  “My heart play’d duntie, duntie O

  an’ ceremony laid aside

  I fairly fun’ her cuntie O!”

  Bathsheba, at the back of the room, laid down the apron her mother had given her, and began to undo the buttons on her shawl. It took a moment for Nan to notice but when she did, she let the dishes she was stacking drop back on the table and rushed to her. No one noticed, for Bessy had begun yet another song – “Duncan he cam here again” – and twelve voices joined in:

  “Ha ha, the girdin’ o’ it!”

  Their hair wet with sweat, necks bare and shoulders shining with steam from the pots and heat from the ovens, they worked to a quick rhythm. With all the banging of ladles and slamming of oven doors, singing and running from one side of the kitchen to another, no one saw or heard the struggle going on between Nan and her daughter who continued to loosen her shawl.

  “He kissed my butt, he kissed my ben

  He banged his thing against my wame….”

  Nan stood in front of Bathsheba, still pleading with her, her words lost in the din, and holding the now discarded shawl in front of her. But the daughter ignored her mother, and stepped out from behind long woollen mantle.

  “And, wow, I got the girdin’ o’ it!”

  The entire crew shouted out the final line and the room was full of the squeal of laughter. But only for a moment. One by one, the women felt the merriment die on their lips. They stepped back from Bathsheba and stared, astonished.

  The girl stood before them in Elspeth’s dress – no more than a petticoat, as translucent as a wisp of summer cloud, chosen by George Lisle for what it would reveal, not conceal. The women were struck dumb, not because of the girl’s near nakedness – with the sweat pasting their own shifts to swollen bellies and heavy breasts, they were every bit as exposed as she – but at the curious pattern on the Bathsheba’s skin.

  All their lives they had been told it was Bathsheba’s sensitive fairness that obliged her to wear clothes covering nearly every part of her. And indeed those parts of her skin that were white had the delicate hue of fresh-plucked lemon. Now they saw the truth. Across her right shoulder, like the leather strap of a carrying-basket, ran a deep black stain. It continued widening down to her breast, over most of her belly, covering her entire left thigh.

  Bathsheba held her head up, looking directly ahead, and slowly turned her back to them. The same discolouring, beginning in a light brown but darkening as it drew out, descended from the small of her back across her waist, most of her backside smeared with it. For a moment, the women thought the pattern was on Lady Elspeth’s gossamer dress. Perhaps the girl was confessing to ruining it.

  “What happened?” Blind Mary broke the silence.

  Susan Millar replied that Bathsheba was half nigger.

  “Since when?” replied Mary, staring through half-dead eyes.

  Between them all, the women had seen or heard of every kind of unnatural birthings – white daughters with pronounced negro features, tightly curled hair set in unblemished skin, or coal-coloured sons with shocks of blond hair. Fully black offspring born to white couples, babes mottled and daubed in various ways. Few of these children had survived. Bairns with pronounced birthmarks had them treated with coconut milk and akkie juice, often successfully. Toddlers with hair deemed too woolly were shaved and their scalps bathed in a shampoo of seaweed, aloe and birch-bark; in a passable percentage the hair grew back in a little straighter. Jenny Campbell was one of the few who rejected all advice and ran off with her lover – a freed slave named Joshua – to Speightstown, and never made contact with the estate again, and was never spoken of.

  Bathsheba turned and got on with stirring a pot. The women’s stares soon turned from Bathsheba to Nan. Nan of all people – daughter of Mary Miller, with Diana Lady Elspeth’s closest associate – had lain with a blackie and kept the debauchery secret all these years! There were a thousand questions to be asked. Was Lady Elspeth herself a co-conspirator? Did Shaw and Lord Coak know? Everyone was too startled to voice the questions. What explanation, if any, had been offered to Bathsheba herself? Who was the father?

  “All of you kenned and liked him,” said Nan, unable to control the quiver in her voice.

  “Did he force himself ’pon ye?”

  “He did not.”

  She said she wished she had had the courage to stand by him and present their child to the world as a wedded couple. “But I seen what happen to ither women and their bairns. My lass might never have been born, or lived past weaning. Her faither tried to get me to fly, but we couldn’t think where we might go. He agreed to keep his silence and watched his chile grow from nearhand but in secret.”

  Nan spoke quietly, as if she were talking to herself and not to fifteen gawking women. Bathsheba’s father, she said, never relinquished hope that she and their daughter might one day leave with him and start their lives anew. But Nan couldn’t leave the people she had grown up with and loved.

  “Ye could hae talked wi’ us afore the birthing,” came a voice from amongst the women.

  “She spoke to me.”

  All eyes turned now to Diana Moore. Diana – the midwife who ministered potions to stained babies, who mixed concoctions that brought on miscarriages and stillbirths – an abettor to this most unexpected of crimes! She who had worked so closely with Captain Shaw to ensure the health, vitality and purity of Roseneythe; the champion of Shaw’s “Method”. The enforcer of rules to ensure there’d be offspring aplenty of a strong, white
, Christian ilk. The woman who spent her life proselytising on behalf of the factor’s ideology, who had trumpeted Bathsheba’s purity of body, mind and soul, since the very night the babe was born.

  “’Twas a long confinement and painful, during which time Nan influenced me with her arguments. I argued back, saying that, no matter the rights or wrongs of the thing, such a large untruth wasn’t possible to hide. Nan swore it was only for a few months until she decided what to do. You’ll all remember it was rainy the night Bathsheba was born and the few of you who came near I shooed away. The lass made her way into the world and gave a good healthy scream. She had the face of one of God’s favoured angels. When I saw the unfortunate aspect of the rest of her, and Nan’s frail state of mind, I agreed to keep the secret for the duration of one month.”

  That month came and went and soon even Diana became convinced that their trespass might go undetected. “The child entered my heart in some way.”

  Nan looked over at Diana, with tears in her eyes. “I’ve thanked you ever’ day in my prayers syne that night, Diana Moore.”

  Bessy Riddoch stepped forward.

  “Ye never tholed my dochter’s bairn sae kindly, Diana Moore.” Rhona Douglas, seldom heard to speak, did so now: “Nor my ain wee boy.”

  “Nor my grandbabby’s neither, Mistress.”

  Almost half the women stared at her, anger and hurt aching in their look. Diana looked around them all, and tried to keep her voice steady. So many families she had tried to help – and never sure her assistance was welcome, beneficial or even Christian. Nan drew the looks of the women away from the ashen-faced midwife.

  “I was aye frightened by Captain Shaw,” she said. “He only has tae look at me, pass my door, glance o’er at me through the cane, and my heart’d tremble near to stopping.”

  She looked around the assembled women. Susan Miller and Jean Malcolm’s faces hardened. Mary’s blind eyes moistened. A few other women looked away, or kept peering at Nan as if some explanation of her words could be found in the lines of her face or the nervous movement of her hands.