July went to the kitchen where Patience placed within her busy-busy hands a tray of sour oranges. She required July and Molly to clean the hall floor. And July is a lady’s maid! There was no protest to make to Godfrey that was not met with his shaking head, for this was an extraordinary day. So, on her knees July had had to go. The cut upon her thumb filled with smarting as she rubbed the juice from the halved oranges into the wooden floor—it pained her bad as a lash-stroke rubbed with salt pickle, yet still she had to polish until the shine rose bright as sunlight upon water. And, all the while they polished, Molly insisted upon beating her coconut brush against the floor and singing loud in her no-tune voice, ‘Mosquito one, mosquito two, mosquito jump inna hot callalu.’ It made the nasty toil harder for July, not easier as the fool-fool Molly declared it would.
Twelve people for a fancy feast was enough to intrude upon the slow routine of the kitchen in the sad-to-hell massa’s house. But to snatch the two washerwomen, Lucy and Florence, from the province of their stream—to stand them shifting upon their bare feet in the corner of the sweltering kitchen, their wide-eyes staring perplexed upon the pile of massacred fowl, rabbits and turtles to be cooked—was a cruelty.
For these two women, trying to obey the peculiar orders that were barked upon them, ducked with each command as if the words were striking them. And, no matter how Hannah yelled upon them to raise the flour for the pastry from fluttering fingers and roll it soft with light intent, Lucy and Florence treated that dough like a soiled undergarment that must be cleaned. They banged it, they beat it, they swung it around their head and dashed it against a stone.
Hannah had little time for pastry, for all the hucksters came in upon the kitchen that day in an eager, yet lazy, line to sell their wares.
The negro woman with skin so black it was blue called ‘mango gwine pass’ as she strode to the kitchen door in her gaudy striped skirt with a basket upon her head. Showing Hannah the plumpest of the mangos from her provision ground, she bent slyly to the old cook to murmur what she had heard from the preacher-man about them all soon to be free. Whispered close, yet spoken fast, Hannah did not hear every word—something was lost about the king and the massa—but she nodded with feigned understanding.
The mulatto woman who had bought her own freedom and a cart upon the same day and sold cedar boxes full of sugar cakes frosted in pink, white and yellow—the one who was saving for a donkey so it was no longer she that had to push-pull the produce—she had heard that it was the King who said there were to be no more slaves.
The fisherman with his barrels full of blue-grey shrimp that slopped puddles of water over Hannah’s feet as he lifted up the squirming crustaceans for inspection, had heard nothing. Come, this skinny man with one leg shorter than the other, did not even attend the chapel in town. But that free coloured woman with brown skin scoured to light, who informed any who would listen, ‘Me never been no slave’, the one who rode in a cart, pulled by a ready-to-dead mule, and twirled upon her parasol as her jars of guava and lime pickle, ginger jelly and pepper sherry were lifted to the light to be inspected, said all this chat-chat was nonsense—that the white massas were correct, the King-man had said nothing about them being free.
Many came to the kitchen that morning with their yam, plantain, artichokes, pineapples, sweet orange, green banana, cheese, and coffee beans. They came to grind the knives, mend pots and bring the dozens of boxes of beeswax candles. Yet Hannah had no time this day to chat gossip about what was heard at the Sunday chapel—the one held outside the blacksmiths in town where everyone gathered to hear preacher-man talk about free. Come, with all these hucksters arriving, she barely had time enough to puff her pipe through several bowls of stringy tobacco with them.
Godfrey, sitting upon his chair by the kitchen, carefully attended to the parade of hucksters for he had to pay for their produce and service from his purse. His cupped hand cautiously guarded the leather pouch which he held close within his lap. After each transaction he counted the money that remained—his lips wordlessly miming the sum without looking upon the coins. It was fortunate that his hair was already white, for this day was a trying one for Godfrey. Where was Byron? It was a long time ago that Godfrey had sent him to fetch water and the boy had not yet returned. And there was still the table to be laid, the candles to be placed, the yard to be swept, the dogs to be tethered.
When July appeared saying, ‘Mr Godfrey, this cloth you give me be a sheet for the bed, not for the table,’ he, with a careless flick of his hand, told her, ‘Go lay it ’pon the table.’
‘But it be a bed sheet, Mr Godfrey.’
‘How you know that?’
July inhaled the breath. She intended to respond to this very simple question—for the difference between a fine quality linen for a table and a simple cotton sheeting for the bed was within a field nigger’s grasp to understand—but instead she began to smile, for she scented Godfrey’s mischief.
‘Miss July, is that a bed sheet you be holding?’ he asked once more.
‘No, Mr Godfrey, it be a fine tablecloth,’ July replied.
‘Then go put it ’pon the table,’ Godfrey told her as a hog ran past him, chased by the dog. ‘Wait, the hog not dead yet?’ he suddenly cried. ‘Catch up the hog, where is Miss Patience? Catch up the hog.’ All at once, Patience was there, bending low, her apron outstretched as she sought to corner the squealing pig against the walls of the kitchen. While Miss Hannah, at the kitchen door with a pan in her hand said, ‘What, the hog not dead yet, Mr Godfrey?’ And Godfrey, kicking the dog away from the confusion called, ‘Byron, where is that boy? Why the hog not dead yet? Byron!’
CHAPTER 8
CAROLINE MORTIMER WAS RESOLUTE; nothing would be allowed to mar this Christmas dinner for her. Mrs Pemberton of Somerset Penn and her two cousins from England had sent word that they were unable to grace her table. Why? Caroline was never to know, for the small negro boy who had been despatched had tucked the note containing the precious explanation into the waistband at his trouser. This urchin had then run so far, so fast, that his soppy sweat had rendered the note into nothing more than a spreading grey stain upon Mrs Pemberton’s fine laid paper.
‘What did it say, boy?’ Caroline had asked.
And in front of the Anglican clergyman, Reverend Pritchard, John had replied, too tersely indeed, ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Caroline, look at the shabby wretch, do you believe he can read?’
Yet Caroline had merely laughed off this reproach, and the clergyman’s look of discomfort. Then, as the sun had set, the startling pink hues of that dusk had so reddened the sky that Henry Barrett, the tiresome old attorney from Unity, had left off slurping upon the malt liquor, (his third glass), to comment that it appeared that they were all caught beneath a sheet soaked in thinning blood. ‘Fine aspect you have here, though,’ he added, finally heeding the appalling image he had left upon his listeners’ mood. John, remembering a similar sunset that occurred the night his wife Agnes had died, whispered noisily into Caroline’s ear, ‘Bloody fool.’
And oh, oh, oh! Caroline Mortimer had been assured by Godfrey—not once but twice, perhaps even three times in the asking—that the group of negro fiddlers engaged to play pretty tunes such as ‘Whither My Love’ or ‘The Red, Red Rose’ could also play ‘Silent Night’ tolerably well. An extra shilling Godfrey had asked, to bribe them from a Joncanoe masquerade in town. Yet the clatter they made as her guests changed their shoes, was unrecognisable as a tune. Come, throughout the whole melody an ugly buck-toothed negro at the front thrashed his tambourine as if to fright crows from a field. Yet it was a silent enough night for some, for the old negro poised upon the triangle looked to be asleep.