And July did count the time: one day, two days, three days she had not seen her mama. Four days, five days, six days, and still her mama never came. Seven days, eight days . . . she counted until all the numbers she had learned were gone. And so she began again: one day, two days, three . . . yet still she remained.
Caroline Mortimer had proved doggedly determined to make a lady’s maid of July (or Marguerite as she believed her named); sure as a turkey seized for the Christmas table, July had been raised, caught and stuffed for the task. For the white girl, Mary, with whom Caroline had sailed across an ocean from England (upon her brother’s instruction), had died a few weeks after she had arrived upon the plantation. It was Florence and Lucy whom the massa had charged to nurse this bag-o’-bones servant girl back from writhing with a raging fever and tortuous pain at her stomach, to full curtseying obedience.
But Mary, who had come from a place called Cork to wait upon Caroline Mortimer, was required upon the ship that sailed from England, to shit squatting with her backside dangling over the side of the deck. Now, no one but her mama had ever seen those two cheeks of hers before, and Mary believed no one but her mama ever should. Although careful to tip Caroline’s full pot over the side every morning of that long journey, Mary had contrived rarely to allow her own shit to fall and held it inside her long enough for it to fell her with a mysterious ailment. She finally parted from Florence and Lucy’s careful physic, and her own life, spewing forth a fetid brown waste that should have been falling all the while from that other hole.
She was buried at the same time as the missus, Agnes Howarth, and her short-lived pickney were laid in upon the ground. The missus, who had died giving birth to a son that lived only two days upon this earth, had a trailing line of mourners that so blocked the lane to the churchyard with their carriages and slaves that three of the finer women (new from England and dressed in black wool for the service) were struck down in the midday heat.
Mary, the servant girl, was laid a short walk from the back of the kitchen, near the provision ground of Florence and Lucy. For Caroline decided, on behalf of her grieving brother, that a Christian burial would not be necessary for her erstwhile maid-of-all-work. So the two negro women dressed in their finest red kerchiefs and, arguing all the while whether a white girl would need rum for her journey home, sang not only a dirge but the melody from a newly learned hymn as they laid her in a hole that delivered her into the proud arms of Godfrey’s late wife. Godfrey did not attend the burial for he feared—as the earth became thin upon his wife’s bones—that she might find reason to scold him from beyond.
And, oh how, Caroline Mortimer had wept in those days. Not in sorrow for the sudden loss of her sister-in-law, nephew and servant girl, for she was scarcely familiar with any of them. No. She sobbed, ‘I hate this house and I hate this island, Marguerite . . . What am I doing here? . . . Did I leave England for this? . . . My brother hardly knows me . . . Oh why must I stay? . . . Because I have no choice, that is why . . .’ for finding herself with not a companion, nor a friend, in the whole world, let alone the wretched island of Jamaica, except one little negro girl named Marguerite.
So menace it all she might, but Caroline Mortimer would never have commanded a militia man, nor redcoat, to take July away from her to break her upon the wheel or lock her within the stocks. July was now sixteen and never spent time in fretting that her missus might return her to the field, no matter on how many occasions that fool-fool white woman did warn it. For what would Caroline do?
Who but July could help the missus with her morning burden of sifting the skulkers from the sick amongst the negroes. With Agnes deceased, Caroline’s brother in such ill humour that he rarely left his chamber or his bed, and the overseer insisting it was a task for a master or mistress to perform, it fell to Caroline to inspect those field slaves that hoped sickness might find them relieved from their work. Dusted grey, limping, their clothes all awry, straggling in a long line, that most pitiable rabble coughed, whined and limped with their assumed ailments up to the great house upon Monday mornings to stand for inspection before Caroline, who trembled and sweated at the very sight of them. Always she insisted that July remain at her side. And with each negro that presented their complaint, July would whisper into her missus’s ear, ‘No. Him jus’ have sore head from too much rum,’ or ‘That black tongue not be sickness, it can be wipe off,’ or ‘Caution missus—yaws!’ whilst holding out a violet-scented handkerchief for her missus to waft back and forth under her nose during this endurance.
And who but July would know to tip a near hogshead of sugar into her missus’s morning coffee? For anything less would see her grimace with the pain of a child flayed or squeal that it was too sour. Or that she liked her sangaree, not with the juice of a lime, but embittered with the peel from a lemon. And that she required salt fish, yam and cured pork at her breakfast table, but no pickled tongue; she could not abide the look, nor taste of it. And that her back needed to be rubbed after she had drank her Epsom salts so as to release, into a belch or fart, the wind that so plagued her. Who but July could the missus call upon to pull her from the cane-bottom dining chair when, once more, it split under her ample strain? And it was only July she requested to nurse her when, with a persistent pimple upon her chin, she was forced to take to her bed.
So when July lifted her head from her sobs that day finally to obey her missus’s command and show her the degree of spoiling the fine muslin dress had undergone, her face was damp with real tears, her imploring hands trembled, her breath whimpered in trepidation, yet, just like Godfrey, our July was not really fretting.
CHAPTER 7
‘WE MUST HAVE BOTH turtle and vegetable soups.’ This was how Caroline Mortimer began commanding Hannah, the cook, over the Christmas dinner that must be prepared. ‘Mutton and pigeon pies and guinea fowl, of course,’ she went on.
Perhaps, reader, you are familiar with the West Indian planters and their famed appetites. You may have had cause to entertain them at your own table and watched your house servants dash and scurry to attend upon them. If this be true, then you will also know that the flesh of many a poor creature needed to be sacrificed to satisfy their greedy-guts.
This dinner was to be a party of twelve seated at John Howarth’s table to celebrate that Yuletide and perhaps, in this year of 1831, bring about the change within his spirits that his sister Caroline had so prayed for. For he was—these many years after his wife, Agnes, had howled in that final useless childbirth—still the saddest widower upon the whole island.
Godfrey, who had been standing all the while through these instructions, had his head inclined. This dutiful gesture gave the impression that he was listening to his missus’s words when, in truth, he was peering out of the window at a distant tree. For, amongst its branches, he could clearly see the missus’s white cotton petticoat. It had flown up there this morning after July had carelessly left it lying upon the ground. It had been picked up by a strong breeze and was now caught within that tree, flapping bold as an ensign from the mast of a ship. His eyes soon returned to his missus as she said, ‘We must have the best cheese,’ for he did not wish her to follow his gaze to see Byron, under July’s command, feebly trying to pluck down the forlorn garment with a stick.