Seeking Eden Page 11

  My master was making his way towards us, and I reluctantly let go of Kate, who went to him.

  “Well done, lad,” he said. “It could have been worse. They’ll bring our Friends to court in the morning, most likely, and the Negroes will be released on payment of the fines. I told the soldiers I was from Philadelphia. The Governor needs to know that Friends here have our support…” He caught the eye of someone beyond me and smiled a greeting. “There’s John Crosbie! I hadn’t realized he was here. He was lucky not to be arrested, for I see he’s brought at least one of his Negroes with him.”

  I turned to see a tall, fair man, younger than George Bainbrigg. With him were two white men, apparently his servants, and the black youth I had helped to hide.

  “Come and meet him,” George Bainbrigg said. “He’s a friend of mine – another Yorkshire man. We’ll be going out to his plantation soon.”

  That evening I managed to find a moment alone with Kate. My master and other Friends were talking downstairs – too taken up with the day’s events to concern themselves with us. Kate and I met on the upstairs landing, by a shuttered window, and clung together for several moments without speaking.

  “Oh, I’ve missed thee!” I said at last.

  “It’s always like this, travelling with my father. He knows so many people, and we visit and talk…”

  “I’ve wanted to talk to thee,” I said. “Didst thou know – I suppose thou must have known – that Friends here have slaves?”

  “Oh, yes. Didn’t thou realize?”

  “Not till we came here. Not till I saw that man being taken as payment for a fine. A man!”

  She looked up at me anxiously. “Thou should not be concerned, Jos. None of our Friends here would ill-treat their slaves. They care for them, encourage them to marry, educate their children. You’ve seen the servants in this house, Dinah and Tilly, how contented they are; they are house slaves.”

  I said hotly, “I saw how that woman – Dinah, is it? – was terrified when the soldiers came, begging them not to take her child!”

  “It was the soldiers who terrified her.”

  “But it was our Friends who brought her to Meeting!”

  I had spoken more loudly than I intended, and she flinched. “Jos! People will hear…”

  She looked hurt, as if I accused her, and I felt sorry and gathered her into my arms and apologized with kisses.

  The colonial way of life had not been such a shock to her, I supposed. She had come to the New World as a child of twelve and would have become accustomed to it more gradually.

  She leaned in against me. “We’ll have more time together at the Crosbies’, I think. And more chances to meet.”

  “Is it a big place?”

  “Not as plantations go. But the house is a rambling sort of place, lots of rooms; verandas… Thou’ll like it there.”

  Tokpa

  When my master says he will take me to the big meeting of Friends in town I want to hide away. Why me? Why not all the other house slaves? I have been to the Friends’ meeting before, and demons with guns and loud fierce voices came and dragged me and the other slaves away and locked us up and beat us. They said we would be sold, but the next day my master came and paid money and the demons gave me back to him. The Friends sit long hours waiting for the Light, but they are always troubled by these bad spirits with guns. I don’t want to go, but my master says I must.

  “He likes thee and wants to teach thee,” Miata says. “He is taking thee under his wing.”

  I know this is true. My master often talks to me about the Light. I tell him I think the Light is like Yala, and he agrees, but he says I must not believe the things I was taught as a child; I must not believe in spirits and evil spells. He says the Light is inside me; inside everyone; the Light is all we need.

  In the meeting house silence falls and we sit still – as still as hunters who wait for their prey. At last one of the Friends stands up and talks long, long, about God, and the Seed, and the Light.

  Then the demons with guns come in and people move and cry out and the smell of fear rises. I shrink back against the wall. There is a man there, a man of the Friends. He is young, like me, and has a girl with him. They move in front of me so that I am hidden from the demons. The young man says nothing, but I know he has done this to help me.

  Fourteen

  About a week later we drove to the Crosbie plantation in a wagon, Kate and I sitting together and her father opposite. All the way I was aware of Kate beside me, our arms almost touching, her thigh – under its layers of skirts and shift – next to mine. It was frustrating to be so close and yet unable even to hold hands.

  I had not liked Michael’s Town, but now, as we drove towards the centre of the island and up through the plantations, I thought this high ground would surely be healthier. For as far as I could see the hillsides were covered with tall green plants, swathes of stubble and lines of black people cutting the cane. Almost the whole island, it seemed, was given over to the production of sugar. As we drove closer, I saw what arduous work this was. The men were using huge curved knives – billhooks, my master called them – to hack at the canes, which were thicker than a man’s arm. They cut them a short way above the base and threw them down, while women and older men moved along the rows, bending and gathering, and loading them onto carts, leaving a field of thick stubble. The sun beat down, and overseers – also black, some of them – patrolled the rows. Several times I saw a whip curl through the air and strike a worker. Once this happened so close to us that I heard the smack of the plaited leather on the man’s flesh. He staggered, but did not cry out, stoically continuing his work.

  “Planters who are Friends discourage such cruelty,” my master said. He glanced out. “The land up ahead is Crosbie’s. See those buildings? That’s where they process the canes for sugar.” He explained the method, and said John Crosbie would be sure to give me a tour of the works. He also told me about the Crosbie family: John, who had come to the New World from Halifax in Yorkshire five years before; his wife Ann; and their two small children. It seemed that all was not well with the Crosbies. They had suffered greatly from fines for not sending men and horses to the militia and for bringing Negroes to Meeting; last year’s harvest had been bad; and recently a fire had destroyed some of the plantation buildings.

  “John needs help,” George Bainbrigg said. “He spoke in his last letter to me of selling up and going back to England. His wife’s health is not good and she has no love for the island.”

  I murmured sympathy, but in truth I thought little about the Crosbies’ plight except to wonder whether my master’s absorption in their affairs might allow me more time with Kate. I spared a passing thought, also, for the black youth I had encountered at the meeting; no words had been exchanged between us, and yet I had felt a connection with him. I wondered who he was and whether he was one of these who laboured in the fields. The wagon jolted over the rutted path and the hot wind blew dust over us. Sweat trickled down my forehead and between my shoulder blades; I felt ludicrously overdressed in my woollen clothes. Kate, whose face looked pink and shiny, brought out a small fan and wafted the air between us.

  Now we were approaching the house, which was set apart from the plantation buildings and fields, and had a garden around it. It was a large white stone house with a veranda all along the front and balconies above.

  “John Crosbie must have been wealthy,” I said, “to have bought this place.”

  “Aye – but business is always risky,” my master said. “Bad luck can happen to anyone. Well – here we are.”

  Our hosts came out to greet us. John Crosbie was a tall, scholarly-looking person with a slight stoop, not the sort I would have expected to find running a plantation. He looked tired; his eyes were bloodshot and his fair skin was reddened by the sun. His wife was much younger (a second marriage, Kate told me later). She appeared unhappy and resentful, though she was civil to us. Her eldest child, a boy of about three, held the han
d of a black nursemaid – a slave, I supposed – and hid his face in her skirts when Kate tried to talk to him.

  Their house was cool and spacious, with airy rooms and windows open to the veranda and a breeze blowing through from front to back. I was given a room to myself with a door onto a balcony and shutters that could be closed at night. A black girl brought a jug of water, towels and soap. She was soft-footed and submissive, with a downward glance, but when I thanked her she looked up with a flash of eyes darker and more brilliant than any I had seen before.

  I washed and changed my linen and then, hearing a door open, stepped out onto the landing, hoping to see Kate. But it was her father, who had the room next to mine. Kate appeared from a room further along, looking cool and smelling of rosewater.

  We ate fresh fish – flying fish, our host told me – for dinner; and breadfruit, and beef from New Jersey. Two slaves served us – a woman and a young man; their names were Lucie and Antony. I recognized Antony as the youth from the meeting. For an instant our eyes met, and I knew he remembered me, but he gave no other sign. Like the girl, both he and Lucie were quiet and unobtrusive. I watched his hands as he set down the dishes for me, and noticed roughened weals from old scars around both his wrists. Shackles. I had seen such scars on the wrists of Friends who had suffered in London’s prisons. It struck me forcibly how he must have been brought to this island, bound and shackled; and I remembered the slave ship I had seen on our voyage to America, and the unspeakable smell that came from it; and Walt Burney telling me how that ship would be carrying three or four times the number of souls as ours.

  And yet, here, this young man seemed to have a good life. He was a house slave, clearly well treated. Maybe Nicholas Yates was right, and the slaves were better off here than in the moral darkness of their lives in Africa? Capture and transportation seemed unbearably cruel – but perhaps, I thought, for the sake of their souls, it was a necessary evil.

  That evening, after supper, I stayed for a short while with my master and John Crosbie as they talked of earlier times and John’s present troubles. But they were old friends, and I felt I was inhibiting their conversation. I soon excused myself. Kate had already disappeared with the wife and children; I could hear the little boy’s voice from somewhere on the floor above as I left the room.

  I went upstairs, to my room, opened the door onto the balcony, and stepped out into the embrace of the warm evening air. It was dark, the breeze blowing streamers of cloud across the moon. In the shifting patches of clear sky I glimpsed stars that shone with a wondrous brightness. There was a scent of flowers. And from all around came a high persistent shrilling of insects. This I knew to be the sound of cicadas, for Kate had told me about it. I wished she was here to share the sound with me now.

  The balcony overlooked the side of the house, and a little way off I could see what looked like a village, with huts set in a straight line as if along a street. Fires flickered there, and in their light I glimpsed people moving about. Beneath the sound of cicadas I heard other sounds: voices, and an intermittent drum beat. I realized that these must be the homes of the slaves who worked on the plantation.

  Curiosity led me downstairs again, and I found my way out through a back door and onto a dirt path that led to the slaves’ village.

  Here, the sounds of human activity were much clearer: children’s voices; women calling to one another; babies crying, water splashing; two men arguing or, perhaps, merely talking loudly – I could not tell which. There was a smell of cooking and woodsmoke – homely smells.

  And still I heard the drumbeats – not loud, not persistent; it was the sound, perhaps, of two friends idly picking out a rhythm together. Now and then it stopped; occasionally a few men sang – one calling, others responding; sometimes the song broke up in laughter. It sounded companionable. These were men who were tired after a long day’s work, sitting at ease together, making music.

  I did not dare go any closer. I guessed I would be unwelcome in the village. I stopped in the shade of a large tree and listened.

  There were two drums, I realized, a larger and a smaller, and some kind of twanging stringed instrument. Blended with these was the sound of voices. Their music seemed strange at first, but after a while I began to hear different rhythms, criss-crossing and changing in a complex way. The sound got inside me; it caught and fascinated me. I’d been told these people were savages, but when they sang and played they made a pattern of harmonies as subtle as any I’d heard in England.

  The moon was high now, and the wind had risen and was rattling the leaves of the palm trees; yet the air was still warm – a sticky heat. A lamp had been lit above the door where I had come out.

  I turned back, and had almost reached the door when I heard whispering voices, a scamper of quick feet – and then someone came around the side of the house and started at the sight of me.

  It was Antony.

  “Sorry, master – sorry,” he said. “I did not see thee…”

  “It doesn’t matter. And don’t call me ‘master’. I am only an apprentice. My name is Josiah.”

  He looked wary. I remembered the whispering; one of the voices had been female. Had he been returning from a tryst with someone, out there in the dark under the palms? The thought made me shiver with envy and desire.

  “I came out to listen to the music,” I said. “The drums and singing.” He did not respond; and I sensed that he was nervous, that he feared trouble. “I’d have thought thou might be there, among them?”

  “No. I am a house servant. I wait on the master.” And he lowered his gaze and half-turned towards the door.

  “That drumming!” I said. “I never heard such music before! It – it speaks to me. I can feel it in my bones.”

  He paused then, and I knew I had his attention. “Some nights I go down there,” he said. “The drumming takes me home to my village. I remember my friends. I remember songs, dances, making music together.” There was longing in his voice.

  “And that is lost to thee now. I am sorry.”

  He hesitated; then said, “I made a drum… Thou won’t tell my master?”

  “No!”

  “My master is a good man. He does not beat his people. He teaches me to speak English, tells me about the Light. But in his house we must not sing or dance.”

  “It is the Friends’ way,” I admitted.

  And it struck me, not for the first time but more strongly than ever, how strange it was to deny the urge to make music that God had given us. But I knew Friends would say that God gives us many desires that must be reined in or denied.

  I tried to explain, to myself as much as to him. “Other people – worldly people – dance and sing. But Friends believe music takes up time that should be spent in prayer, or reading the Bible, or in silent waiting on the spirit.”

  “In my village the spirits dance,” said Antony.

  I wanted to ask him about his country, about his life there, how he was taken from it, how he came to be in Barbados; but the questions seemed too big, too painful. Instead, I asked him, “May I see the drum thou made?”

  He looked uncertain, and began to retreat. “I should go in now. My master…”

  “He’s talking with my master. They won’t need us.”

  “Come, then.” He opened the door, stood back for me to enter, then led me along the passage to a small room containing three pallet beds on a wooden floor, a bench and a washstand. I noticed a Bible lying on the bench. The room was plain, but not so very different from my own room at George Bainbrigg’s house – except that this was a dormitory.

  “Others sleep here?” I asked.

  “Yes. Reuben, the groom; and the boy, Paul – Lucie’s son.”

  He reached into the space between his bed and the wall and brought out the drum and handed it to me. It was small, made from a hollowed-out gourd, and covered top and bottom with a membrane of hide, tied in place and adjusted with pegs set around the rim. I tapped the skin experimentally and felt a satisfy
ing resonance.

  When I gave it back to him he squatted on the bed, set it between his knees, and began to play. It was a repetitive, mesmerizing beat, simple at first; but then he began to add different rhythms, building up one on another. After a while he stopped drumming and started to sing, quite unselfconsciously, almost as if he had forgotten I was there. I did not need to be told it was a sad song; all the pain of separation and loss was in it.

  I sat on the bench and listened, and observed him. He was as tall as I was, but bigger and stronger-looking. What was his life, his work, in Africa? I wondered. It was beyond my imagining. But I understood that this drum was a work of love. I thought of him making the instrument himself, finding the materials and tools, and having the skill to do it.

  The song finished – or rather, it stopped, because the music was too unfamiliar for me to hear the approach of an ending. He offered the drum to me again.

  I tapped a simple rhythm, childish in its simplicity. What a joy it must be, I thought, to be skilled at this, to play and sing with others.

  “I can’t play,” I said.

  “Thou could learn.”

  He had learned many things. How to endure the terrible Atlantic crossing; how to survive in a strange land; how to speak English – and Friends’ English, at that.

  “Thou speak English well,” I said.

  He looked pleased. “I learned many languages since I left my village – I did not know there were so many, or so many different people in the world. When I went on board the ship there was no one else who spoke my language.”

  “But” – I was puzzled – “surely the ship was full of other slaves?”

  “Yes. But none who spoke Kpelle. I learned Kru, Bassa, Asante, Temne, Fulbe…”