Redlegs (20 page)

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 with 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.

The evening repast that night was a sombre affair. The pregnant Diana read longer from the Bible than usual, recalling God’s
command
to Abraham to sacrifice his only son. Even Shaw was visibly moved and had kind words for the devastated Moira and Bernhard. He let the entire workforce sit on longer than their allotted
forty-five
minutes’ eating time, signalling to Robert Butcher to bring out a flagon of rum, so they could all drown their sorrows.

The Captain stayed on drinking unusually late, in the company of Robert Butcher, Malcolm Baxter and Nathanial Wycombe. Robert retired when Diana finished her chores. Nathanial and Malcolm went off with a flagon of rum in search of Bernhard, reported to be wandering down by the cove. Still Shaw sat on, letting the candles and lamps gutter out around him.

Elspeth remained awake in the upstairs library, reading and
talking
to Mary and Diana about the day’s sad events. The clock had already struck ten when Mary came in to bid her goodnight. “The captain is still below stairs, Ma’m.”

“Is he drunk?”

“I’ve ne’er seen him fu’, so I wouldna know. I dinna think so. Still, I’m feart o’ spierin’ him to leave.”

“I’ll go down, Mary. Thank you.”

By the time she had closed her book, doused the lamps and went downstairs, Shaw had gone. Only recently, however, for she could
still smell him in the musty air of the night. She had been aware of his smell at Roseneythe for as long as she could remember: an unexpected sweetness. Like any plantation-dweller, he smelled of sugar cane, but coupled with a balmy flavour, like children’s candy, that might originate in the treacly cheroots he sucked on. Neither pleasant nor objectionable, it was Shaw’s unmistakable mark, and served as a warning signal of his approach.

She followed this sugary trail out onto the porch. There he stood in the middle of the herb garden smoking a last cheroot and
staring
up into the sky, its contents of stars and moon buried under thick cloud. The night throbbed with insects, heat and frogs, like an aching head. The factor was only ten years her elder, but Elspeth had to remind herself of the fact – the authority of his demeanour and the thick veins that gnarled his neck and arms always put her in mind of the ancient fig trees around the estate. He had
thickened
out a little since she first saw him – that skeletal puppet that had bellowed at her now had the hide of an old horse.

“Poor Bernhard. Do you think he will recover from the blow?”

“He’s not too old. Time yet to father another son.”

“Can one son replace another?”

The Captain looked into the darkness of front of him. “Better a replacement than no son at all.”

He walked a little towards the drive, and Elspeth, realising how little she knew of this man, followed.

“Did you ever have a child yourself, Captain?”

He shook his head slowly and answered as though giving his opinion on an agricultural matter. “I made a covenant many years ago to dedicate myself solely to my work. I was once a lustier man than the one you see before you. I hope the thought doesn’t offend you.”

She laughed – the notion of a lusty Captain Shaw was comical and yes, perhaps a little offensive – but also at the idea that anyone could suspect her of primness. “If once there was a lustier man here, Mr. Shaw, then there was also once a more forthright woman.”

He nodded his assent, as if he had always known the fact.

“There was a time, sir, when I was known in this island for my bluntness. Perhaps too much.”

They began walking towards the drive where his quarters lay, the Captain, thanks to the rum, speaking openly and relaxed.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Though naturally I am ashamed of it.”

She was not ashamed. She felt not the slightest tinge of remorse for anything she had done or said in those glorious days. She found herself giggling in front of this severe man – as though she were the girlish debutante of old – and being rewarded with a rare smile. They walked on down the driveway towards his home. She had often seen him at the end of the day walking in the direction of the gates, or marching up between the twin lines of trees in the morning, but had never discovered where his house actually stood. If they kept on walking, she would have to turn back – the bend before the last stretch of drive to the gates was her limit.

“Were they very dreadful, these stories of me?” Why was she doing this? It had never occurred to her to trifle with the Captain. He was much too austere, and too injured. Moreover, she knew he had little time for her. Perhaps it was a need for release from the day’s tension and sorrow that triggered a devil-may-care mood within her. He, too, was in a lighter temper. She walked jauntily, as though she were at George’s side again and the trees at either side of them ranks of soldiers saluting them.

“Such matters don’t trouble me the way they do others.”

“The tomfoolery of silly young actresses?”

Were it not for the baggy plainness of his work clothes, the
captain
would not have seemed quite such the peasant countryman. He would never be handsome, but he might scrub up respectably enough. She smiled at the thought – what airs and graces she had acquired since becoming a Lady! The upstart libertine of the Lyric was an act she had calculated to play; the colonial planter’s lady had grown in her without her noticing it. “Thank heaven for you and Diana, captain. You keep us all on the straight and narrow. But I know you are a little scandalised by the easy virtue of the artisan class?”

She was playing her old self again, revelling in piquant
conversation
. She felt a spring in her step for the first time in an age. But Shaw was incapable of social gaiety. “I have important work here,”
was all he could say. His brow furrowed to emphasise the
gravity
of his words, but he forced a smile, creasing the skin between beard and mouth. In that costly gesture, she detected something she hadn’t noticed before: complicity. Shaw regarded Elspeth as one of his own followers! Another Diana; a Nathanial Wycombe, even. How long had the distant, evasive Captain considered her a friend? They had worked together effectively enough in the past, it was true. But as enforced colleagues. What was it the taciturn, gnarled factor felt he had in common with a supercilious actress, the usurper of his patron’s time and attention?

Bitterness. A hidden distress. The feeling of being blown
somewhere
you were never meant to be. Was that it? Shaw talked on as they strayed further from the lights of the house behind them, deeper into the driveway. The darkness, making the path
unrecognisable
, made it safer: there was nothing round the next bend; not the gates, not the road behind them, just more black night, as though the dark had hollowed out a cavity in the world for them. The blitheness she had felt just moments ago left her. Shaw and her alone in the midnight; two iron nuggets of equal magnetic field; each hammered by uninvited hands into new and unnatural shapes. A feeling of recklessness overcame her – like it used to in front of coarse audiences; against the oak tree with Thomas; the morning she kissed the perspiration off Francie Edmonson’s brow. Lines and passages from plays filled her ears. And, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn upon you. In the gloom – thickening with every step – she lost sight of the path below her feet and the man walking next to her. Instead she saw a picture of herself, lying down, without warning, on the path before his feet. Use me as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me. The feeling was akin to the abandon she had experienced with George – perhaps more powerful: the need to strip away layers of herself that had accumulated silently over a decade and more. The veneer of false pedigree, the film of unlooked-for and unwarranted dignity. She felt tree-roots and stones stabbing painfully into her back; caught her breath at the notion of her pulling up her skirts, feeling the dust and grime on her thighs, dirt on her breasts. She was overwhelmed with a craving to show herself to a man who cared nothing for her,
have him lay his wooden weight on her. The simplicity and
directness
of it! No preludes or preambles. No parading or reciting. The freedom that was once gifted her with the help of Dalby’s
calmative
and the sea. She had been withered by the ghostly caresses of an old man’s eyes; the cleanliness of fingers that refused to touch her. Rejected by the lowliest of black boys, deserted by her dead lover. She needed the fierce feel of skin and hair, the ache of rocks beneath her, branches scouring her. She caught her breath, and could not fill her lungs again.

How could she be mother to such perverse desires? “What worser place can I beg in your love – than to be used as you use your dog?” She became aware, through the raw fog in her mind, that Shaw must have asked her a question, for he stood gazing expectantly at her. As she leaned in towards him she saw the astonishment in his eyes. He let her kiss him and push her body into his. He put his arm on her shoulder and turned her around. For a moment she thought he was about to escort her back to her house. Instead, he led her into the trees. Without a word, he helped her over clumps of shrub and boulders and she, assuming he was searching for a clearing, looked avidly around too. She might be walking to her doom. He would have her, and expose her for the debauch that she was. If that were to be her fate, so be it. When her life was being properly lived, chance grabbed her at unexpected moments and altered her. His sickly-sweet smell, sharper now than ever before, the grip of his fingers, and the ocean that surged under her dress, were all that drove her on at this moment.

He did not take her deeper into the wood, but steered her towards his house. The closing of the door behind her was like a breath snuffing out the flame of her lust. She had wanted to be nowhere, with no one, just her body in the wilderness, unfastened from her life. Now, in the room where he lit the lamps, there was too much of this man. His writing desk – a solid rich mahogany, gleaming inappropriately in the mean room, on which were neatly set out bundles of papers, quills, a Bible. The chair was home-made, and the couch on which he sat and beckoned her to him was a hard, homespun pallet. There were pages from Scripture pinned to his
wall, alongside other writings, all in his own hand. Sheets of paper with the names of Roseneythe’s women and men, and a tally of their owings and their offspring. Hanging on a peg on the door was his militia suit which she had seen him wear, hunting down the maroons.

She sat beside him, but keeping her distance, the hot urges she had felt only a moment ago completely supplanted by a cold dread. Not of him directly – he looked too taut and heavy to make any lunge at her – but at herself; at the degradation she was capable of. She could see by his loose-fitting trews that he was erect, and the sight revolted her, and seemed to revolt him too, for he strained his head upwards as though trying to uncouple his upper from his lower half. He took out a cheroot and began to smoke.

Shaw could only have chosen to live so meanly: Albert would surely have lodged him better had he so wished. Sitting there, in silence, she knew she had never sunk so low in all her life. From the gaiety of the theatre and the finery and wit of George, she had fallen to the level of seducing a Christian man in his slave-hut. The glittering prospects of her days in Bridgetown had been reduced to a vulgar fumbling in the woods: she was the girl again, with her back to a tree after a show at a mean penny-gaff. Another woman would weep, she thought. But her eyes remained dry. Tears would come later, once she was safely home and confessing to George, her true husband, and their waiting child, who must be looking down now at her disgrace.