Haggard (2 page)

‘
. . . together with fifty-seven bookkeepers and their wives, and children.
’

They had reached the door to the summer house. Adelaide went inside.

'I do believe you say things like that just to irritate me. How can a planter be friends with his bookkeepers?'

'Because most of them are very good fellows. As you must think, or you would not have them here tonight.'

Adelaide seated herself on the bench which ran round the inner wall of the small wooden building. 'One must have more men than women at a ball, John Haggard, and you know that as. well as
I.
Will you not sit down?'

Haggard sat beside her. ‘I
am feeling better already. And Flyaway is a
fine
stallion. Worth risking a scar for. Although
I
suspect poor
Mal
will never forgive me.'

'I did not bring you out here to talk about
Mal
. John . . .' She chewed her lower lip in sudden nervousness. 'I do think about you, a great deal of the time.'

'Whatever for?'

'Oh, John . . . because
1
love you, you silly great lout. There.' She peered into the gloom, but could not see his face. And he had not moved. 'John,' she said desperately.
'
I
love you.' She seized his hands, waited for the fingers to close on hers, and when they would not, brought them against the bodice of her gown. 'John Haggard, you must have some feeling for me.'

'Indeed I do.' Haggard's knuckles rested against the pushed up softness of her breasts. 'I think you are a jolly good sport, Addy. But you are too serious to make a good mistress.'

'Mistress?' she shouted, throwing his hands away. 'I have no intention of being anyone's mistress.'

'And I have no intention of marrying again. Ever. So I would say we had best end this farce right away, and get back to the dancing.'

'Why, you . . .' She glared at him in the darkness her brain consumed by a raging fury. 'You unutterable cad.'

Haggard stood up, and gave her a brief bow. 'Your servant, Miss Bolton.' He turned to the door, watched Malcolm Bolton hurrying along the path. 'Ah,' he commented. 'A plot.' His voice remained soft, gave no indication of his sudden anger.

'Plot?' Malcolm came up to the doorway. 'I heard Addy cry out. What has happened, Addy?'

'He . . .' Adelaide sucked air into her lungs, noisily. 'He assaulted me.'

'He did
what?’

'Your sister is an hysterical liar,' Haggard said, speaking very evenly, although his mind had already seethed into the black rage which left him wishing to hurt, and hurt. These people had made it plain to him, often enough during their youth, that they regarded him as an ill-educated lout. While at his wedding, with Sue still on his arm, incredibly lovely, incredibly willing to love him, he had heard Adelaide Bolton whispering to her friend Annette Manning, 'What a waste of a beautiful woman. She must love money even more than us, my dear Annette.' And now
she
would fill those irreplaceable shoes? 'With the instincts of a whore. I will bid you goodnight.'

He stepped past the momentarily dumbfounded young man, on to the path.

Malcolm caught his breath. 'Stop right there,' he commanded. Haggard stopped, half turned.

'You'll apologise, sir,' Malcolm Bolton demanded. 'On your knees, you'll apologise for those words.
’

'I have never apologised in my life,' Haggard pointed out. 'And certainly I shall never do so for speaking the truth.'

Then you'll answer to me, John Haggard.'

'Don't be more of a fool than your sister,
Mal
. Go to bed and sleep it off.'

Once again Haggard turned, and walked towards the house.

'Stop,' Malcolm bawled. 'Stop,' he screamed.

Haggard ignored him, walked up the steps and into the suddenly overheated ballroom. He caught Willy Ferguson's eye, and the overseer hastily apologised to his dancing partner and hurried towards his employer.

'I
shall be going home now, Willy,' Haggard said. 'But you and the others stay to the end.'

Willy frowned at him. 'Is something the matter?'

'Probably not.' Haggard walked towards the head of the room, where the senior Boltons were sitting with the guests in their own age group. But he had not reached them when there was a shout from the doors to the terrace.

'Haggard.'

The music had just stopped, the dancers were about to leave the floor. Now they paused, and looked towards the door, and gasped in unison. Malcolm Bolton stood there, the sword which had so recently been the instrument of the wager held in his right hand, the arm itself extended to point at Haggard.

'You'll apologise.' Malcolm's nostrils dilated. 'Or I'll kill you.'

'With that?' Haggard inquired, softly. But the couple standing closest to him, and able to see something of the expression in his eyes, backed away.

'Malcolm.' Papa Bolton was on his feet. 'John. What nonsense is this?'

Malcolm Bolton came closer. 'He has insulted Addy.' 'John?' Bolton inquired, frowning.

'He called her a liar, and a
...
a whore,' Malcolm said.

There was another gasp, and a woman pretended to faint.

'John?' Papa Bolton's voice was an octave higher.

'That is correct, sir,' Haggard said.
'I
called your daughter a liar, because she had just told a lie, and accused her of having the instincts of a whore, because she had just revealed them.' Once again he spoke very clearly and distinctly.

'My God,
’
Papa Bolton said.

'You'll leave this house, John Haggard,
’
cried his wife. 'Do not ever come back.'

Haggard bowed in her direction.
‘I
had that in mind, Mrs. Bolton. I will bid you good-night.'

'You . . . you'll just let him go?' Malcolm Bolton shouted. 'You'll answer to me, you lout.'

'Don't be a fool,' Haggard said. 'I could blow out your left eye while you were still levelling your pistol.'

'Ha,' Malcolm said. 'I doubt you are as good as you pretend, John Haggard. I'll have satisfaction, or brand you a coward from here to Jamaica.'

Haggard gazed at him for some seconds, then shrugged. 'I will need a second,' he said, glancing around his fellow planters, and hardening his expression as he saw them turning away. He knew he was hated as much as he was envied as much as he was feared.

'If Mr. Bolton will permit me.' Willy Ferguson gallantly stepped to the support of his master.

'I am sure he will be delighted,' Haggard said. 'You'll inform me of the arrangements in due course, I have no doubt. You.' His hand came up, the forefinger outstretched, to point at one of the Bolton slaves. 'You've a horse in your stable called Flyaway. He belongs to me. Have him s
ent over to Haggard's in the morn
ing. And have my mare saddled. Mrs. Bolton, I apologise to you for spoiling your ball. The fault was not mine.'

He turned and walked from the room, while behind him the buzz of conversation suddenly boomed into the night.

Haggard walked Calliope along the beaten earth road, enjoying
the cool of the evening, tricorn
e tilted back on his head. His brain was clear; he might have been drunk when he accepted Malcolm's foolish wager, but he was sober now. And angry. It was an anger he knew well, a deep-hearted resentment which he could neither understand nor combat. Nor expect anyone else to understand. He was John Haggard. He was enormously rich, utterly healthy, had normally no more cares in the world than which of the thousands of acres he planted should be inspected on the morrow. And yet, for four years now he had seemed pursued by a malevolent fate, as if Nature, or God—he belonged to that rationalising group which doubted—had said, that man has enough, make him suffer.

On his wedding night, five years ago, there could have been no happier man in all the world. His father had still been young and healthy, so that the burdens of plantation management lay a long way in his future; he held in his arms the loveliest girl in all the West Indies, a girl who loved him; and the American problem, then, had seemed no more than a colonial quarrel which could affect the lives of no one in Barbados.

But that had been before Lexington and Bunker Hill, Burgoyne and Saratoga. It had been before the yellow fever epidemic which had struck down Father in the prime of his life. It had been before Sue's pregnancy, and the resulting puerperal fever. All
that
had happened in a single year, at the end of which he had supposed himself damned. And yet, he had continued to be Haggard, to act the part to which he had been born, because he knew no other.

So now he must kill a man. Or be killed. The decision was his. But Malcolm Bolton was a good, if slow shot. If he was not brought down before he could aim, he would hit his target.

It might have been better to marry the whore. But Adelaide Bolton in Sue's bed, lying in his arms? Adelaide Bolton presiding over Haggard's dinner table? Adelaide Bolton at his side for the rest of his life? He could feel the anger building in his belly. Against all women, but against Adelaide Bolton as the representative of her sex. He hated them all. Illogically, as he recognised. But they were there, strutting the streets of Bridgetown, whirling across Bolton's dance floor, engaging in their feminine conspiracies and flirtations. While Sue was dead, nothing but bones in the coffin which lay in the Haggard vault, on the hillock a mile from the Great House.

And now, with their conspiracies, they had forced him to kill or be killed.

Dogs barked, and the mastitis frisked about the mare, who ignored them as she knew them so well. Haggard had in fact been riding across his own land for some time, but now he was approaching the town. For Haggard's Penn was a town. Beyond the wide wooden gateway through which the moonlight streamed there was a pleasant pasture, watered by a little stream, and providing grazing for a herd of cows. The estate buildings were half a mile farther on. To the right of the drive was first the circular, many-arched sugar house, and then the boiling house, dominated by the tall, square chimney, now silent like a monument as the cane was not yet fully ripe, and beyond that the slave logies, arranged in orderly rows, each backed by its own carefully cultivated vegetable garden. To the left of the drive waited the houses of European staff, and the chapel, every one whitewashed and with a substantial red shingled roof to keep off the annual rainstorms brought by the hurricane winds of the early autumn.

Farther off yet, set half a mile from the nearest other habitation, was the Great House. The Haggards had planted in Barbados for over a hundred and fifty years, coming to the islands in the very early days of the colony when the Courteens and the Willoughbys had still been debating ownership. Thus the house retained traces of its less secure heritage in the massive stone cellars which formed its foundation, loopholed as a last refuge for the family and their retainers against revolting slaves or marauding pirates. Above, the great windows and the wide opened doors gleamed with light, for Middlesex lit every candle every night for all that only the master and his infant son actually lived in the house. But every window and every door was also guarded by a thick shutter. Nowadays these acted as protection against hurricane winds, but they too suggested a stormy past.

The gambolling dogs had alerted the watchmen, and they hurried forward to escort their master, seven of them, big black men armed with nightsticks, and happy to see their favourite white man. Whatever Haggard's dark moods, he seldom directed them at his own people.

'Man, Mr. John, but you home early.'

'Man, Mr. John, but it ain't midnight yet.'

'Man, Mr. John, but them white people ain't still dancing?'

They reached the foot of the steps leading up to the verandah, and Haggard swung himself from the saddle.

They're still dancing,' he said. 'Abraham, I wish you to saddle up and ride into Bridgetown. Fetch me Mr. Lucas.'

'Eh-eh? But he going be happy to come out this time, Mr. John?'

'You tell him I want him here before dawn. Tell him it is an urgent matter.' Haggard climbed the stairs, confronted James Middlesex, his butler. It had been his father's fancy to name all the house slaves after English counties.

'Mr. John?' Middlesex peered at him. 'I going fetch the port.'

'Not tonight, James. The boy asleep?'