‘Missus calling,’ Patience said once more, this time directing her breath upon July. But she received no response for, at that moment, a little boy came in upon the kitchen yelling, ‘She have the egg. Me wan’ the egg. It be me egg. She have me egg. I get the egg. She tek the egg. It be me egg, me egg, me egg! Me wan’ me egg ...’
‘Byron, hush up,’ Godfrey shouted as Hannah, woken from her sleep, sat up fast as a living man caught in a hole for a corpse.
‘Byron, get out me kitchen. I tell you once, I tell you twice ...’ Hannah yelled.
‘Me wan’ the egg. She have me egg. She tek me egg . . .’
Byron was one of Godfrey’s houseboys. He cleared the tables, he swept the yard, he fetched the water, he killed the rats. But his face was always so live in motion, that if you had asked Godfrey what Byron looked like—once Godfrey had told you that he had a high colour, lighter even than his good late wife, (God rest her soul, but please do not bring her back to him!)—then Godfrey would describe to you an indistinct blur. For Byron never stayed still long enough for Godfrey to peruse his features for recognition.
‘Byron, me no wan’ hear your jabber,’ Godfrey said, but Byron was gone. And, in his place, there lumbered in the large brown dog named Lady, who rested its weary head in Godfrey’s lap, then sat its quaggy backside down upon the missus’s dress that July was working on. Come, its white muslin and gauze trailing along the dirty earth and brick of the kitchen floor was softer than a rug for the tired, dusty old beast.
‘Marguerite,’ came the calling again and all souls in the kitchen—including, if you listen close, the brown dog—did give a little groan.
‘July, go see to her, nah,’ Godfrey flashed. ‘She paining me head.’
July tried to lift the missus’s dress from under the flank of dog, but the hound, languid yet determined, did cling on to the moving cloth. First one paw did claw its nails into the fabric and, seeing it still stirring beneath it, a second paw then pierced it too. ‘Lady, get off,’ July scolded. ‘Mr Godfrey, you can get the hound off the dress?’ Godfrey first patted Lady’s lolling head, then kicked it hard upon the rump to shoo it away.
July held up the dress to better inspect it. Come, it was one fright. For not only had the brown dog left the print of its backside upon the skirt like some filthy bull’s-eye, but its mucky paws had walked a dog-foot pattern up the white muslin where none was required. But this was not the only trespass upon the garment. For Florence and Lucy, the two ever-jabbering-but-understood-by-no-one washerwomen, had returned this fancy dress from another savage laundering at their pitiless hands with all its many frills, flounces and furbelows pressed quite flat. And although made of the softest gauze, the sleeves of this dress were starched so stiff as to appear like pieces of wood. The rigid arms stuck out in front as if the dress were pleading for someone to embrace it. No pearl buttons were left upon the cuff at the wrists—for those that Florence and Lucy’s frenzied pummelling did not send shooting off into the air like gunshots, July achieved their loss with a dainty snip-snip from her scissors. And the collar of lace that had wrapped like a pelerine at the neck was entirely missing. Lost either on a bubbling raft of soap, blue and starch that sailed it away, unseen by its two lathering guardians on the river’s tide, or soon to be found under the mattress where Molly sleeps, while she feigns bewilderment, crying, ‘How it get there?!’ No need to enquire the number of securing hooks and black wire bars that were still in place upon the dress, for there were none.
As July lifted the garment higher to the light, turning the bodice to inspect the lining and tracing the frayed progress of several of its unravelling piped seams—she said, ‘Mr Godfrey, me gon’ get whipped for this. It mash up.’
And Godfrey, smiling, said, ‘Miss July, me no frettin’.’
And here is why.
When July reached the room where her missus reclined, rigid with furious impatience, she ran in upon it with such vigour that the drinking glasses that adorned the mahogany sideboard did quiver and resonate to announce her arrival on a melody of tinkling bells. She flew to where Caroline lay and, before her missus had time to take a breath with which to start her intended lengthy, fierce and hysterical scolding, July threw herself upon the floor, held the dress aloft and yelled, ‘Missus, the dress spoil! Them mash up your dress. It mess up, it mess up. Oh, beat me, missus, come beat me! The dress spoil, spoil, spoil. Come tek a whip and beat me. I beggin’ you missus!’
No word had passed Caroline’s lips, yet her mouth gaped as she hastily sat up upon her daybed. ‘What is it, Marguerite? What is it?’ July, rising on to the bed, pressed the dress close to her missus’s face. The missus shrieked and thrust out her podgy hand—either to keep the howling slave from her, or to stop the stiff sleeves of the enfolding dress from bashing her about the head.
‘Missus, come beat me,’ July shouted as she made grab for the slipper on her missus’s foot and pulled it off. Holding this pink satin shoe high in the air July brought it down with a smack against her own head. ‘Come, missus, beat me,’ she pleaded. She made move to hand the slipper to her missus but, as the missus reached to grab it July quickly tossed it away on to the floor, yelling, ‘Oh, missus, oh, missus! No look ’pon the dress—it mash up.’ July then threw herself down flat upon the floor on top of the frock and buried her face in its cloth. Her legs kicking, her arms flailing, she let out a deafening cry of, ‘It ruin, missus, it ruin!’ before collapsing in a heap of pure sobbing.
‘Calm down, Marguerite! What has happened?’ the missus screeched—her voice rising shrill enough to make Lady the dog stir in its far off slumber. ‘Show me the dress, show it to me now or I will whip you . . . I will . . . I will . . . Do you hear me? Do you hear me? I will . . .’
Now, July knew that her missus would not actually whip her, for she kept no whip. If any whipping were required then it would fall to John Howarth, the massa, to perform that duty. But he of late did not flog. Since his wife Agnes’s death only five weeks after Caroline’s arrival in Jamaica, he had not the energy for beatings, for there was no crime, to his desolate mind, that seemed to require it.
Upon the other hand, the overseer, Tam Dewar, was ever prepared with his industrious lash. But Amity was a busy plantation with many, many, many indolent, skulking, tricky, senseless, devious slaves. On the last occasion that Caroline Mortimer had bid a stripe be laid upon July (for leaving her missus quite alone in the house for an entire night), Tam Dewar had bemoaned—whilst his chewing tobacco stained his breath a darker and darker brown for the eternity of the discourse—that he could not be everywhere at one time. In a shower of rancid spittle he had finally inferred that the mistress might do better to learn to use her own whip.
So Caroline had tried once to use the braided buckskin lash (with the terracotta-painted handle) that her brother had bequeathed to her from his wife Agnes’s belongings at her death. But as she flicked it at July’s departing back (on this occasion for spilling the contents of a night pot over the floor, as I recall), Caroline hit herself with the thrashing hide quite smartly in the eye. The whip then went missing. And despite a thorough search made by all the house negroes none ever managed to find where July had hid it.