The Long Song (31 page)

 

 

 

 

S
OMEWHERE, READER, THERE IS a painting, a portrait rendered in oils upon an oblong canvas (perhaps an arm’s span in width) entitled,
Mr and Mrs Goodwin
. This likeness was commissioned by the newly married Caroline Goodwin from a renowned artist who did reside within the town of Falmouth. The painter—a Mr Francis Bear—produced, in his evidently short life, many portraits of Jamaican planters and their families; indeed, at one time, it was quite fashionable to have a Bear in your great house.

The sitters in this portrait sat for several weeks within the long room at Amity making no movement nor sound, as requested by the artist, whilst steadily perspiring their finest clothes several shades darker. But what became of this portrait I do not know. It was lost or stolen or perhaps even nibbled to tatting by some of the many ravenous creatures that live here upon this Caribbean island. However, if you should perchance alight upon this portrait,
Mr and Mrs Goodwin
, please be sure to make a careful study of it—for hidden close within its artifice lies the next piece of my tale.

Standing tall in the foreground of this splendid picture you will find Robert Goodwin. His manner is casual, one leg crossed in front of the other, while he leans his elbow upon the chair back in front of him. He wears a light linen jacket with a waistcoat of cream silk embellished with a tracery of green floral stitching. There is no hat upon his head, and although his curling hair and bristling whiskers confer the distinction of a gentleman upon him, they also cause him to look a good deal older than his years.

Not yet married a full year, his countenance appears serene enough. But, come, look closer still, for the beam within his blue eyes is pure relief, the spirit within that meek smile is satisfaction; for Robert Goodwin had finally been released from the long-preserved state that, in deference to his good father, he had kept achingly intact until his wedding night—his virginity!

However, it was not Caroline that plucked him. For while Robert Goodwin’s new bride lay reclining upon her bed—the ribbons at the neck of her nightgown untied and the garment teased down low to reveal the ample mounds of her primped and scented breasts, as she eagerly waited for her new husband to finish his business within the negro village—he was in the room under the house, frenziedly dropping the clothes from off our July’s back.

He had turned July around within the feeble light of a tallow candle like an anticipated birthday gift finally unwrapped. And, as if to confirm that each inch of her was indeed as delightful as his possessed mind’s eye had conjured, he studied her close. Laying her down, his hands stroked all over her. And where his hands roamed, his tongue and lips soon followed. When he entered her his breath came so fast and he yelled so loud that July slapped her hand across his mouth to stifle the sound lest her missus hear this obscene intimacy seeping up through the boards of her floor. Afterwards he hugged July close to him—her back against his front. He had married ‘that woman’, he told July softly into the dark, just so he could be with her like this—just like this. And then he whispered to July over and over that he loved her, oh how he loved her.

By the time Robert Goodwin finally arrived at his new wife’s chamber, he was exhausted. He promised Caroline that their coupling would take place soon and not to bother him now, for he was very tired as the negroes had quite worn him out with their demands . . . and, oh please could she cease mentioning it . . . and certainly she was his love, but would she stop incessantly whining, for it was making his head ache . . . and, of course, of course, he desired her, but had she not heard him? . . . soon, he promised, soon. Then he slept sweet as a suckled and belched babe.

Whose suggestion it was that the backdrop for this portrait—
Mr and Mrs Goodwin
—be the open landscape of the plantation and not the long room at Amity, is arguable. The artist—who took several months to carefully figure the grounds into a tropical idyll—claimed it was his. However, Robert Goodwin maintained that he saw a similar background used in a painting of some English gentry and so declared the idea his own. But whoever fathered the notion, Robert Goodwin stands before the trunk of what appears to be a rather puny baobab tree. No longer a lowly overseer, he looks every part the master of the beautiful view that the artist has constructed. Come, his chin is held high. And why would it not be?

Eight letters Robert Goodwin had received from his father which had urged him with increasing passion, to think of marrying soon. His father wrote of his age—how he was no longer a boy; of his circumstance, which would be greatly eased with a wife to share his burdens; of temptations that were easily overcome within marriage; and of Lucinda Partridge, a young girl within his father’s village in England who always talked of Robert with affection and had ambition to travel.

Robert Goodwin had longed to oblige his father with this seemingly commonplace request. But he loved a negro girl. He loved July. And to marry a negro . . . to marry a negro! Oh, who could countenance such an indecent proposal? Certainly not his father. To bring kindness to the negro, to minister to the negro, to pity the negro, was his father’s dearest wish for him. But for his son to marry the negro—that would surely kill him.

However, within the next letter that he received, his father had written: ‘Remember, Robert, that a married man might do as he pleases.’ Now, although Robert Goodwin had never dared to even hint to his father of the troubling attraction he felt for the negro house servant, he somehow came to believe that those instructive words were meant as suggestion. A married man might do as he pleases.

If, Robert Goodwin had pondered, he were a married man, then might he not be able to keep July outside his marriage but within his firm affection? Could he not fulfil the promises he made before God to a wife and still treat tenderly the woman who had his heart? And who would know? Who would suspect? And if they did, might not they turn a blind eye upon a married man? Of course they would—he had known his father do it many times before. And there was such blindness upon this Caribbean island.

Besides, to marry Caroline Mortimer would be to help her further. Robert Goodwin’s firm conclusion had been that she would benefit greatly from the arrangement. His standing with the negroes upon the plantation would rise once he was no longer merely the overseer, but master of Amity. The simple negroes would surely do anything that was required of them if they were bid by him—their new, beloved massa.

Robert Goodwin had soon come to believe that it was not only his father, but God the Almighty, that compelled him to conceive this plan—for it was to the injury of no one, and the advantage of all. So his chest is puffed proud within the portrait—for his marriage now kept two women quite content with him and his father above pleased with his son’s turn of fortune. Indeed, the letter of congratulations he received from his father read:

Within the painting you will find the missus, Caroline Goodwin, seated upon a chair—the one that her second husband leans upon so casually. She is arranged at a decorous angle within the frame, one that shows off the slope of her shoulders and the intricate array of twisted braids and curls within her hair very well. Her hands, resting demurely on her lap emphasise the billowing folds of the full skirts of the wedding gown she wears, and also succeed in flaunting the fashionable tight cuffs of her bishop sleeves. Indeed, so attentive was the artist to render truthfully the detail of this gown, that the pink silk of the garment shimmers as if the actual cloth were pasted upon it.

However, not wishing to offend the woman who was paying him well to execute this portrait, Mr Francis Bear has allowed Caroline Goodwin to seem a little more slender than perhaps any who knew her would recall. For example, what appears to be a rat escaping from under her skirts in the picture is, in truth, the artist’s notion of the missus’s foot within her cream slipper, if the missus’s foot had been dainty.

The intention was that Caroline Goodwin would gaze from out this canvas upon the viewer with so attractive a smile, that all who saw it would contemplate with envy this perfect scene. But no teaching the artist had ever received made him skilled enough to make Caroline’s smile alight not only at her lips, but also within her eyes. No matter what pains Mr Bear took (and he took plenty—reworking her features for a full three days), her smile stayed resolutely only at her mouth. And, in consequence, all who ever viewed the picture were left puzzling as to how a woman that appears to be smiling so heartily can look so downcast.

Caroline Goodwin had been married for nearly a year and yet her new husband had only come to her once—no, twice—in all that time. Upon that second occasion he was so full of madeira that his organ was limp as the tongue of a thirsty dog. And Caroline had a secret wish (perhaps it was not too late for her with such a youthful husband a dozen years younger than herself). She wished for children. She would be a very good mother—none who knew her did doubt it. Yet the nearest she had ever come to having a child was with . . . But she could hardly bring herself to think upon it—that little thing she had given birth to all those years ago in London. It had been taken away by the midwife, wrapped like a pennyworth of fish in a copy of the
Evening Mail
. Her first husband, Edmund, had complained that he had not yet read the contents of that newspaper’s pages. After that, he never again came to her in a husband’s way. And even though his morning decision was always whether it was wiser to fasten his breeches pulled above or pushed under his enormous belly, he told Caroline that she was too fat for him to find much that was desirable in her.

But her new husband, Robert, was not of that mind—he thought her handsome, he said so all the time. Only, sometimes, when he looked upon her she thought . . . but no, she must be wrong . . . she thought . . . no, no, she was his love . . . but she thought sometimes she could see a little disdain sitting coyly at the corners of his mouth.