Redlegs (24 page)

The annual celebration for his lordship’s birthday in 1871 was coming up, and everyone knew that his last one must surely be soon. The old man ventured less and less out of his room or study and, when he did, he needed the assistance of either Elspeth or Captain Shaw. Everyone hoped that the concert would bolster his
spirits, and ready them all for hard times ahead. Bathsheba’s first performance in front of the Lyric’s old theatre cloth was widely interpreted as the start of a new dawn for Roseneythe. Even Captain Shaw spoke of a new era. It would be exacting, he said, with less wealth than they had enjoyed of late. But they were in good shape: the community was settled, and strong children were growing up around them. Their new world had taken root.

The prospect of hard times did not panic the growing village – over one hundred strong now and nearly a third of the younger generation male. They were well used to struggling for a living – in the older women’s cases both before and after their relocation to the West Indies. Their brief success had hardly softened them or made them rich. All that most people had noticed in the time of the factory was that there had been a good deal more work to be done and an extra leg of chicken at the end of the day. The families were all still in debt to the estate, and there were even those men – fatigued by the demands of feeding and
maintaining
the noisy, dusty machines – who spoke of their relief to see them silenced. The children of that era were growing up stronger and better-fed than their older brothers and sisters, and there had been an observable decrease in unwanted pregnancies and ailing infants. But in the strained eyes and drooped shoulders of their parents the mark of long hours and burdensome work was easily detected. Moiras, Jeans and Marys, who had arrived fresh and strong, if fearful, to the Coak plantation, had shrunk in stature and grown in girth, their necks and shoulders muscled and burnt.

More worrying were the signs of a growing argument and
division
in their extended family, focused around the recent antipathy between Bathsheba Miller and Junior Wycombe, the eldest son of Nathanial. Until her calamity, Bathsheba had been sister to
everyone
: there was not a soul who spoke a word against her, nor she against them. She had been a walking balm, her very
presence
taking the sting out of any dispute. She and her generation were the spirit of the new age, the girls athletic and pretty, the few boys robust and fair, and all apparently deaf and blind to discord or gripe. They were proof that their elders’ struggles had finally
been worth it. But after the accident and Bathsheba’s wondrous recovery – interpreted by all as a blessing from God – the aversion felt by the girl to her childhood friend, Junior, became slowly, and unaccountably, apparent.

Bessy Riddoch was the first to notice the breach. Bathsheba was sitting alone by the side of a field, her energies still not what they used to be, when the Wycombe lad approached her in his usual way, with a smile and a joke at the ready. “Mus’ be nice fuh the women, sittin’ roun’ makin’ flower chains.”

Bess, bundling cane nearby, had noticed how the younger
generation
spoke more like island natives. They still used some of the old words, and Annie and Dainty and the Edmondsons swore they still sounded incomprehensibly Scotch to them. To Bess’s ears, they could have been born in slavery, half African.

Bathsheba did not even look up at Junior. Bess supposed she couldn’t have heard him, it was so uncharacteristic of the girl. The woman had often taught Bathsheba and the other girls how to get a rag out of the boys when they jested with them.

“Show them ye’re as fast wi’ the mooth as they are. Say, ‘Nah nah, I’m workin’ at flattening a wee bundle o’ cane under ma erse.’ Tell them the laddies aye get a’thing cunt o’er bubbies. That’ll wheesht them!”

Too many of them had taken her advice too enthusiastically, to the consternation of Diana Moore. Not Bathsheba.

Junior tried again, coming closer to the girl, no doubt thinking, like Bess, that she was lost in her own thoughts and didn’t hear him. “Penny fuh them.”

Bathsheba looked up at him and her brow fleetingly darkened – a sight unseen since the accident. She said not a word but, looking directly at Junior, got up and walked away, leaving the boy
gawping
. He looked over at Bess and the two of them understood that something new had entered Roseneythe.

No specific argument was ever heard between Junior and Bathsheba. The lad once or twice tried to call her to account, but she replied she had no idea what he was talking about. Other girls began to shun Junior, and his friends kept their distance from them. Sometimes, the two groups would call bad-temperedly at one
another. The parents of each side felt the division growing even between themselves, each blaming the other side for starting the bad blood.

Most would have agreed that a fusing of Wycombe and Miller blood would be a conjoining advantageous for all. Junior was
hardworking
and, if at times his quipping and banter could smart a little, he was undoubtedly an honest, loyal boy. Bathsheba’s
friendship
with him, actively promoted by the Captain and Diana, came undone, it seemed, when she began spending so much time with Golondrina and Brazos and their family. During her recuperation this was understandable, but when she progressed into sturdy good health, people blamed the black women and coloured man for
disrupting
a God-given combination.

Shaw set about trying to rid himself of the troublesome Cuban slaves, but it was not so easily done. Slavery, having been abolished by the distant English parliament with no notion of how life was lived to the benefit of all in the West Indies, meant that they could not be sold back to their original country. Roseneythe Estate had cut itself off and had too many enemies domestically to offload the family. Anyway no one had any use for a skilled refiner.

Brazos showed no inclination to buy out his indenture – even at the reduced price Shaw offered him – and raise his family in freedom. The Captain talked openly of the inertia bred into badly propagated mulattos. “The bloodlines have been stirred with a stick. Use a blunt tool, and you end up with the likes of Brazos. Able enough at his work, I’ll admit, but too much of a dullard to make his own way in the world. Too attached to the comforts of servitude.”

Nathanial had long been Shaw’s deputy, so the Captain was pulled into the vortex of the widening fissure between the Wycombe clan and the Millers. The factor, being an instinctive leader, made no public statements about where his loyalty fell, but he could be seen drinking in the evenings with Nathanial and Junior himself, so there was no doubt where his heart lay. The issue of Gideón and Golondrina became entangled in the silent, moody dispute, and those who remained close to Bathsheba, Nan and Mary Miller were associated with the Cubans, while the captain’s faction – including
the likes of Bess and Susan as well as the majority of the men – felt it necessary to declare that Shaw had led them well over the years and, like him, they had no inclination to defend niggers and cross-breeds.

Bathsheba, in the lead-up to the grand concert, took to
disappearing
for long stretches, walking along the cove and out into the byways beyond Roseneythe. She said she was learning lines Elspeth had given her.

Everyone was relieved to see that the girl was making an effort to resume singing and play-acting again. The physical wounds had taken time to heal; the scar on her spirit would take a little longer. She worked hard with Elspeth, came back to assist Diana again, and her old easy temperament was returning. The
mysterious
schism with Nathanial she took steps to repair, becoming the conciliator she used to be. If she was to win back the respect of all the women, she needed to be a mediator again, not a catalyst for division. Whenever, out for a stroll, she came across Junior or a member of his cohort, she was at pains to be polite. Putting their childish spats behind her, Bathsheba set about her apprenticeship as future matriarch with dedication. She called Junior by name and bade him a good day with a gentle smile. Anyone could see the lad was still much taken with her – and that he felt the formality of her smile more keenly than he had her earlier antipathy.

Everyone looked forward to seeing the debut of their young favourite. But then, unexpectedly, a new problem arose. After an evening meal, three days before the concert, Elspeth stood up before the diners left: “His lordship has requested that Bathsheba rehearse her piece for him before she takes to the stage.” She announced it with pride, unaware that a proportion of her audience stopped dead in their steps as they made their way out the door.

“Of course, Bathsheba, I know you’ll do wonderfully well. But Lord Coak is the best judge of performance I have ever known. Win his approval, and your debut before us all will be wonderful!”

Only on finishing her announcement did she notice the glances between Bathsheba, Nan and Mary Miller, and a general quietness as people made their way out the hall. She said nothing, but went
straight to her room, wondering and worrying about the response to a speech she had thought unimportant.

The rumour had gone around for many years that Lady Elspeth was in the habit of rehearsing naked in front of his lordship. Men had sworn blind that, when the lamplight inside the old man’s room struck the drapes in a certain way, they could see his wife
gesticulating
. You could tell, some said, that she was naked. Some said that they had seen her silhouette actually disrobe. Mary Riach, many years ago, insisted that she had caught sight of the lady in the very act when the door was ajar and she upstairs cleaning. Her word wasn’t the most dependable as she had been half-blind since coming to the colony, but the story was good for gossip.

Tittle-tattle had always flown around Roseneythe, like
hummingbirds
brightening up the long hard graft of the day. Quiet Errol Braithewaite had escaped England after murdering a man. Nathanial Wycombe had once stabbed a darkie. At one time or another every man on the estate had been a murderer, thief or
bigamist
. Bess and Susan, and the younger girls they took out on their jaunts beyond the estate, had orgies with runaways and labourers. Shaw had a secret lover – for a while she was Diana Moore, then Lady Elspeth herself, latterly Jean Malcolm’s eldest, mischievous daughter Ada. Everyone dealt in the coinage of gossip and few believed a word. That Elspeth liked to dance around in the
scuddie
for old Coak had been a favourite distraction for years. There wasn’t much scandal in the story. Even if it were true, their patrons were, after all, as much husband and wife as any. And theatrical types, of whom shenanigans were only to be expected.

By the following morning chatter was rife around Roseneythe. “Aul’ Coak’ll want the Rain Chile t’ birl bare nakit.”

Bess, coming into the kitchens mid-morning with Mary Riach, the two of them covered from head to foot in cane and dust, pressed Diana on the question. “Is that it, Diana? D’ye think Coak’s hopin’ for a keek at the lassie’s erse?”

“Your mouth, Bessy Riddoch, is fouler than the cutters’ latrine.”

“What if he does? He’ll no’ find onything differen’ frae the rest o’ us.”

“Some of us have a modicum of modesty.”

Bess laughed, drank a cup of water from the bowl, and made for the door. “Sure, Bathsheba’s been trained in the dramatic airts. Is that no’ what the whale jing-bang’s for? Gettin’ a leuk up lassies’ skirts for a peep o’ their coggies? Settle yersel, Diana. It’s no the end o’ the worl’.”

Dainty, passing, laughed at Dina’s stern face. “T’ink we pot ent got no cover?” Laughing, she carried on her way: “Old men like to see young monkey tail – and the monkey have fun wining fuh him!”

Out in the fields, Bathsheba herself was being given unasked-for advice. Victoria Johnstone reckoned it was all a lot of nonsense – Coak and Baillie were decent folk who had never acted out of turn in the past. Sarah Fairweather and her mother were appalled at the very idea – Bathsheba should refuse to go anywhere near the man: rich men have forever used poor young girls in despicable ways. Poor Elspeth would be beside herself with rage, they said, if she weren’t too innocent to suspect the truth. Some women and more men stuck up for Albert Coak.

“The aul’ coof hardly knows us!” answered Mary Fairweather. “First he was away tourin’ the world while we worked ourselves half to death. Noo he lies in his bed. He couldna even name the half o’ us.”

Susan shook her head and wondered what all the excitement was about. “Gie the mannie a last wee present afore he drops doon deid.” What harm could it do? But Bathsheba was in no mood for humour, or for receiving advice. She hardly lifted her head from her work, nor responded in any way to the wise words of cousins, cutters, friends and jokers. When work stopped for a midday break, she did not sit with her group as usual, but scurried off with her mother and grandmother. When she failed to come back on time, Victoria sneaked off in search of her, and came back half an hour later saying the three women were ensconced in the chattel-house of Brazos and Segunda!

What was it in her announcement – a statement Elspeth never thought for a moment would receive anything but a smile or a clap from the around the dinner table – that had so offended Diana and Mary? She was hardly close to either woman, though they were the
nearest things to companions she had. Of course, in the day-to-day governance of a house and estate they had had their little run-ins, but nothing prolonged or serious – and nothing she could connect to Bathsheba’s rehearsing for Albert.

She looked for a connection with her terrible lapses with Shaw, but could see none. So adept was she at wiping them entirely from her mind, that such unlikely trysts seemed ludicrous rumours even to her own mind. It couldn’t be that. What else, then?

Surely no one knew of her recitations for the planter? That their marriage was a little unconventional compared to the lives of the women she had not thought problematic. They must know that gentlemen and ladies often maintained separate bedrooms, and the difference in age between Albert and her would clearly
indicate
– especially in recent years – that both would need their own privacies. They would know that she visited nightly, sometimes staying for a matter of minutes, sometimes for half the night. But they couldn’t have guessed how their lord and lady spent their time. She’d always made sure the drapes were drawn and doors closed. Had there been an occasion where she had forgotten? Even if that were the case, and she had been glimpsed – embarrassing and vexing as the situation might be – what had it to do with Bathsheba?