‘I think I will sleep now,’ she said.
She passed into slumber, and I was grateful for it. She was beyond pain in sleep, and a smile touched her lips, showing me her dreams were happy.
Wednesday 23 July
Eliza’s daughter and I are coming to know each other. The little girl, named Eliza after her mama, is intelligent and, now that she is clean, very pretty. She loves her mama, and it brings me great joy to see them together. Eliza is never happier than when her daughter is beside her, unless it is when I recite poetry to her, for we are both transported back to a sunlit world where sorrow never entered, and where we thought we would live for ever.
Thursday 14 August
Eliza was very weak today. I took her hand as she lay in bed and said:
‘If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, “This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.” ’
‘Alas, I am not so beautiful now,’ she said.
‘You are to me.’
She closed her eyes, a smile upon her lips, and I was glad to have brought her some pleasure, for I could tell that she was sinking fast. I sat back so that my tears would not fall on her face and I thanked God for every precious moment she was spared to me.
Friday 15 August
Eliza is dead. She died in my arms.
Oh God! Eliza.
Saturday 16 August
The funeral was a quiet affair. Leyton, good friend that he is, stood by me as I buried her.
‘Come back with me,’ he said, when it was over. ‘You should not be on your own at such a time.’
I thanked him from the bottom of my heart, but said, ‘I must get back. I have her daughter to think of now. Poor child! She has suffered a terrible loss.’
‘You both have.’
‘Then we will comfort each other.’
‘And what will you do then?’
‘I would like to keep her with me always, but I have to return to the army, for without my pay I cannot live. I mean to find a good school for her so that she can be happy.’
‘I will ask Caroline if she knows of anywhere that might suit,’ he said.
I thanked him and then we parted, he to go back to his wife and family, and I to go back to Eliza’s daughter.
Monday 8 September
Leyton has been as good as his word, and with Caroline’s help, I have found a school to take little Eliza. It is run by honest and loving people, and I am persuaded that she will be happy there.
I have recommended Dawkins to Caroline’s brother, and now I must return to the Indies and rise as far as I can in my profession, for a colonel’s salary will enable me to look after myself and my charge far better than a captain’s pay.
1792
Thursday 14 June
As I came off duty this morning, Green sauntered up to me and said, ‘Come with me if you want some sport.’
‘What is going on?’ I asked.
‘Wait and see.’
I followed him along the dusty road, with the sun hot on my back and the scent of musk in my nostrils, until we came to a turning. He led me along a little-used path until we came to a place far away from the camp. The noise hit us first, a whispering like the sea far off, and then growing louder as we drew nearer until we could distinguish cries and then words.
‘Three pounds on Cattering.’
‘Five pounds on the bullock!’
We entered a crowd of men who were busy placing bets, with money changing hands at a great rate. The objects of their betting were standing at one end of a dirt track. Cattering was harnessing himself to a heavily laden cart, whilst next to him was a bullock similarly harnessed. The carts and their loads were the same, and Green said to me, ‘Who’s your money on, Brandon?’
I looked at the bullock and then Cattering. The bullock was stronger, I had no doubt, but I had never met a more determined man than Cattering and I knew his will to win would be stronger than the bullock’s.
‘My money’s on Cattering,’ I said, placing my bet.
Green wavered, but then said, ‘The cart is too heavy for a man, even a man like Cattering. He will never move it.’
He placed his bet on the bullock.
There was some more fevered betting and then the race was on. The bullock made a good start, pulling the cart away whilst Cattering strained to start his cart moving. His muscles flexed and his sinews strained. Great veins stood out in his neck. And then the cart began to move, slowly at first, but picking up speed as he leant forward, driving his legs into the ground and pushing himself forward by main strength and sheer force of will.
He began to gain on the bullock, which had stopped to munch a blade of grass. Its driver drove it forward, but the bullock seemed to take a delight in dallying.
Cattering pulled ahead, cheered on by his friends. He had almost reached the finish line when the bullock suddenly decided it would like to move and it put on a turn of speed that drove the men into a frenzy of cheering and cat-calls.
Bullock and man were neck and neck. Cattering stuck out his head, pushed with his legs, heaved with his shoulders and surged across the finish line, leaving the bullock to take second place.
‘Well done, man!’
The words echoed from dozens of lips as Cattering’s friends — of whom, at that moment, he had a great many — clapped him on the back. Cattering could not reply, for he was done in. Sweat ran freely down his back and face, and he drew in his breath in deep, heaving gasps. But by and by he began to recover, and by the time Green and I left, he was being carried aloft and hailed as a Titan.
‘I was going to put in an order for two more bullocks to pull the guns, but I think I will use Cattering instead!’ I said.
Green laughed.
‘He would cost you too much. Bullocks can find their own grazing. Cattering needs solid meat.’
We walked back to our quarters, and when we arrived, I found a letter waiting for me. Green bid me adieu and I went inside, taking my letter with me. It was from Eliza. I opened it with pleasure, and saw at once that her writing was maturing, for the rounded babyish characters had given way to the more stylish hand of a young lady of twelve years old.
She told me all her news, that she was happy at school, that she and her friend Susan had been singled out by the dancing master as examples for the other girls to follow, and that her sampler had been judged the neatest in the class.
She enclosed a self-portrait for me, done in water colours. It is the wrong way round, she explained, as I took it from a looking-glass, but it is otherwise very like.
I hoped not, for the eyes were of different sizes and the mouth was distinctly crooked, but I treasured it none the less. It showed her with dark hair, which, if the colouring was to be believed, meant that she had lost her babyish fair hair and was now unlike her mother, perhaps resembling her father. I could not understand his abandoning her, for a more cheerful and charming girl it would be hard to imagine; romantic, too, like her mother, for she had discovered Shakespeare’s sonnets, and told me that I must read them, for she was sure that I would like them.
I folded her letter and put it with her others, a treasured pile in my desk, then turned my attention back to my work.