Haggard (9 page)

Ten years, he realised, which had passed before he was aware of it. He was thirty-seven years old. There was a suddenly disturbing thought. And tomorrow she would complete her term of indenture. He wondered if she remembered that. She had not spoken of it.

'Father. Father.' At fourteen, Roger Haggard was already tall and strongly built, his features cast in the distinctive Haggard mould. He really should be at school in England, but Haggard had been reluctant to let him go, had preferred to obtain a tutor from Bridgetown, a clerk from the shipping company which handled his sugar and who possessed a smattering of Latin. Roger was all of Susan that was left, and if he possessed the Haggard nose and chin, he certainly had his mother's eyes, amber and sparkling. As well as his mother's innate gentleness of spirit, which went ill with the tales Haggard had heard of the hardship of life at Eton. And besides, he was already proving a useful and knowledgeable bookkeeper.

Then am I getting set to repeat the mistake of my own father, Haggard wondered? But why suppose it had necessarily been a mistake?

There are visitors, Father.' Roger paused for breath. 'From Bridgetown.'

Sufficient cause for excitement. Who from the outer world that was Barbadian society would visit Haggard's?

Then I'd best attend them.' He slapped his son on the shoulder, began the descent. Emma waited at the foot of the slope, Alice beside her, while Charlie seemed absorbed as ever in his own private thoughts. He was eight and his sister was nine. Two of the strangest Haggards of all, Haggard supposed, both with the red hair of their mother, both with the slightly suspicious expression which haunted her own face. But now suspicion was mixed with disappointment. No doubt in her heart she had hoped, with each child, that she might squeeze a little closer to the strange man who was her master. Now she was resigned.

But
had
she forgotten that this time tomorrow she would be legally free to leave him? If she wished.

Would he care? Could he possibly live, now, without those long legs and those heavy breasts, slightly drooping now, as she had fed both of her children? Without that throbbing belly, with all its gentle stretch marks, without that wealth of straight aubum hair, without that sudden smile and that continuing shyness whenever he reached for her. Could he possibly?

'You have visitors, Mr. Haggard,' she said as he came towards her.

'So the boy is saying. Now there's a strange circumstance. Can we be at war again?'

‘I
hope not, Mr. Haggard. I wish you had more visitors. I wish you would get off the plantation more often. It cannot be good for you to lock yourself away here.'

'I have everything I wish, right here, sweetheart,' he said, and put his arm around her shoulder to kiss her on the cheek. Leave the plantation? Whatever for? To be booed or hissed at? Or just regarded with silent fear and hatred? Haggard the murderer. Haggard the bluebeard. Haggard the man who would not help his fellows. Even, so he had been told by Willy Ferguson, Haggard the madman. Names given him by people who understood none of his strengths or his weaknesses, or his fortune, or his happiness.

Then what of the object who provided that happiness? He looked down at her and she gave a quick smile. Undoubtedly she would stay were he to propose marriage. But he did not want to share. He wanted to own, as he did own. It was a way of life now. There was no one in all the world could question any decision he cared to make. That could not be so were she to be his wife.

But what then did that make him? Why, he supposed, just Haggard. At least he was honest about what made him happy.

But what did
she
think of it all? She never complained, and that he found disturbing. Was she patiently waiting, believing that she must, in the end, achieve her goal? Or was she as bewildered as he, knowing only the mutual satisfaction of each other's bodies, but in her case accentuated by the sudden wealth and power with which she was surrounded, and to which she had access, providing only she remembered to call him Mr. Haggard? He had suggested, often enough, that she try John, but she had refused.

Or was that her own way of punishing him? She would call him John when he put a ring on her finger.

‘I
'd best discover what they have on their minds,' he said, and strode away from her, towards the house. He could see the horses, waiting there, each held by one of the Haggard grooms. Two horses, and two men on the verandah, being served sangaree by James Middlesex. Peter Campkin, and the Reverend Paley. Peter Campkin had married Adelaide Bolton, and since the death of old Papa Bolton was now a planter in his own right.

'Gentlemen.' He climbed the stairs. 'You'll sit down.' He did not offer his hand, nor did they offer theirs in return.

He smiled at them, and waited, while they exchanged glances.

'You'll be acquainted with the news from England,' Campkin said at last.

'What news from England, Peter? Or are the French tearing down more bastilles?'

‘I
am not the slightest bit interested in what the French may do or not do, Mr. Haggard,' Campkin said. 'I am talking of this.' He held out a paper.

Haggard glanced at it, made out the names Wilberforce and Clarkson.

'Ah,' he said. 'The do-gooders. What are they at now?'

'A motion, Haggard, to abolish the trade,' Paley said.

Haggard frowned at him. 'A motion? Where?'

'Before Parliament.' Campkin said. 'To abolish the trade.
What do you think of that?'

Haggard stroked his chin. He was well aware that over the past half dozen years a small party of British reformers had been steadily sniping away at the entire institution of slavery, that there was actually a Parliamentary Commission sitting to hear evidence regarding the worst excesses of the slave owners and their overseers, but he had not given it much thought. Waves of humanitarian sentiment swept Britain from time to time, like epidemics of the plague. The reformers knew very little about the realities of life on a West Indian plantation. If there were slave owners who were monsters of cruelty, he had no doubt there were squires and shipmasters and industrialists in Bristol and Liverpool and London who were also monsters of cruelty to those in their power. But not very many of them, just as most of the planters, certainly those in Barbados, realising the amount of capital they had tied up in each black man or woman, were unlikely willingly to harm them any more than they would willingly harm one of their horses.

'Well?' Paley demanded.

‘I
t poses several interesting conundrums,' Haggard admitted. 'Supposing the bill is made law, which is doubtful to say the least.'

'I would not be too sanguine about that,' Campkin said. This French business has set everyone by the ears. What with all the old nobility renouncing their titles and their rights to serfdom, well

'I had supposed you were not interested in the French?'

'Only in so far as they affect us.'

'What interesting conundrums?' Paley asked.

'Well, just for example, should the trade be outlawed, the value of every slave we own must be immediately doubled, as they will become a very scarce commodity.'

'By God,' Paley remarked. 'Trust you to think of that.' He snorted. 'And of course you have sufficient births amongst your thousands to take care of wastage.'

'Of course,' Haggard agreed.

⁴
I told you,' Paley said. 'I told you we were wasting our time, Peter. This man is a selfish monster. I have never met anyone like him.'

'Mr. Haggard,' Campkin said. 'I know we have not seen eye to eye over the past ten years, and I further know that you have opted for staying out of Barbadian politics. But ten years is too long to have a feud dividing the very heart of our society, especially when there is a crisis at hand. It is our intention, sir, to place our case before the British Parliament. We have already opened negotiations with certain MPs who are prepared to speak for us on the floor of the Commons. But they must represent a united island. Every planter must subscribe his name to the brief we send them
’

'And subscribe his share of the cost, no doubt."

Campkin flushed. 'Well, sir, I will not deny that there is a cost. But nothing the Master of Haggard's Penn would find the slightest heavy, and not a fraction of what we stand to lose should the trade truly be outlawed.'

Haggard pointed his finger at the young man. 'Peter, you are a liar and a hypocrite.'

'Sir?' Campkin sat up very straight.

'Strong words, Haggard,' Paley protested.

'But true enough. You know very well that the last time you attempted to present a remonstrance to the House of Commons, when that fellow Coke was hunting around these islands seeking evidence of mistreatment of slaves, your petition was thrown out because it did not contain my name. You can do nothing without Haggard's support, and you know it. Why not come out and say so?'

Campkin glanced
at the parson.

'And suppose we admitted that?' Paley inquired.

‘I
'd still have no truck with you.'

'You
..’

'Because as usual you are creating fantasies which will probably never come to pass. You are actually encouraging these fellows. Can't you see that? So there are reformers and Quakers and abolitionists in England. Do you seriously suppose that the British Parliament is going to take any steps, any at all, to ruin Britain's most prosperous and wealthiest colonies? Would you seriously cut off your own hand, Paley, because it occasionally touches something of which you disapprove? Absolute nonsense. Unless, as I have said, we planters ourselves leap up in protest, thereby suggesting that we
know
we are in the wrong, at least morally.'

There,' Paley said. 'As I said. You'll get no help from John Haggard.'

He got up, and after a moment Campkin also rose. 'You will regret that attitude, sir. I am sure of it. Just as you will regret your continued antagonism to your fellow planters. There will come a time, sir, when you will need us and we shall not need you. Just as there will come a time when you will know how shallow and useless has been your life, locked away on this plantation as if it were the entire world.' He paused, and gasped, as if amazed at his own temerity. 'And you may take offence if you wish.'

Haggard waved his hand. Take him away, Paley,' he said,
‘I
shall entirely stop receiving delegations from town if their sole purpose is to read me lectures. Take him away.'

The men stamped down the steps, stopped to stare at Emma, who was approaching the house with the children. Then they mounted their horses and galloped down the drive.

'Another quarrel?' she asked as she came closer.

'The quarrel was ten years ago, sweetheart. This is but a further instalment of it.'

"And I am the cause.' She allowed Amelia to replace her with the children, ascended the steps.

'You? No.
no. The cause was there before I
knew you existed. You are perhaps a continued irritant to the good people of Bridgetown. They are
t
oo good,
that is their trouble.' He sat down, took a fresh glass of sangaree, gave it to her. drank from his own.

She sat beside him. 'I can feel their hatred, on every puff of breeze.'

He glanced at her, frowning. 'And it frightens you?'

'Yes,' she said fiercely. 'Yes, it frightens me. Should something happen to you. Mr. Haggard . . .'

'Now what is going to happen to me?' But his frown deepened. There were enough layabouts around the Bridgetown docks for an assassin to be found, should one be needed. It had never occurred to him before. Certainly it had never been something to cause him concern. He was John Haggard. Haggards lived, to the limit of their capacity, until they died, whether from old age, or yellow-fever, or a bullet, sure always that there were other Haggards waiting to continue the family, the amassment of wealth, the prosperity of the plantation. Even when he had set out to fight Malcolm Bolton he had not feared the future, for his son, had only sought to improve its security.

But now
...
it occurred to him that the hatred he had incurred and was incurring would not easily be assuaged. They would hate Roger Haggard as much as they hated his father. While Emma and her children . . . undoubtedly she was right. They would tear her limb from limb. Nor would Willy Ferguson be any protector. However much he pretended, and she pretended, he was the man who had rubbed pepper on her nipples. She must hate and fear him, and he must hate and fear her.

Then why not co-operate with them? If the idealistic machinations of the British Parliament could not harm him, it was just possible that they could, in the course of time, harm Roger. He had spoken the truth when he had told Campkin and Paley that he thought they were going about defending themselves in the wrong way. That did not mean that the planters
should
not defend themselves, under his leadership.