from here. Robert, Robert, the doctor has decided that you must go to Youlgreave at once to visit with your family.’
So there sits Caroline Goodwin, quite flush with high spirits, that this was their last evening upon the island for well . . . for well . . . for well, we will see. She longed to behold England again now her Robert was well—now he was so very much improved. And she had not yet had a chance to speak with Robert about it, but there was a man in London—an agent for a titled gentleman who lived in Bristol—that wished to talk to them about the possibility of purchasing the lands and the great house of the plantation named Amity.
But she does not mention that as they sit at the dining table one last time before sailing to England. For she is too busy telling the tale of her last sea voyage. ‘Robert, did I ever tell you that the ship I travelled in to Jamaica bucked and rolled me across that ocean so cruelly that being strapped to a whale’s back would have been no less arduous a journey?’
But we must, for a moment, leave Mr and Mrs Goodwin at the table—come, we have heard that tale before and wait . . . wait . . . I believe she is about to repeat it again! Let us move on quickly through the doorway of the dining room, out into the hallway. For there, stationed behind the door, clasping an oval, silver, dome-lidded serving dish is our July. As she instructs Elias—who stands before her, wiping his nose with one hand while fidgeting to adjust his itchy breeches with the other—she leans forward to speak as close into his ear as the awkward salver within her hands will allow. Her command to him is to place this dish, ‘Before the massa, you hear me, nah? What me just say?’
When Elias shrugged, she kicked him awkwardly. ‘Before the massa, not the missus. What me say?’ As Elias repeated, ‘The massa, the massa, the massa . . .’ she handed the salver into his outstretched arms with the command, ‘And be careful you no drop it.’
Elias walked the twenty paces from the door to the table, quick as a lizard escaping a snake. July, peering upon him through the crack of the door, inhaled a fearful breath, which she did not release until the fool-fool boy had placed the dish upon the table in front of Robert Goodwin. As his massa turned his head to find Elias asking, ‘What is this, boy?’ Elias ran from the room without reply.
As Robert Goodwin was saying, ‘Yes, yes, Caroline, I did hear you the last time you told me of that voyage,’ he placed his hand upon the handle of the salver’s lid. He then lifted it. A thousand black cockroaches, suddenly freed into the light, scurried from out that dish. They swarmed across the table-top like a spill of dirty water to drop pitter-patter from the table on to the wooden floor. Some fell into his lap. Robert Goodwin was too stunned to feel the crawl of them. He sat entranced, staring at a hideous mound of dead and crushed roaches that were piled high upon the salver. He took a while to start yelling. But then he jolted to his feet—hopping and swiping at his lap, his chest, slapping his arms and face, as the pitiful roar of a donkey painfully dying emitted from his mouth. Caroline stood upon her chair to shriek.
While July, silently watching this frenzied scene through the crack in the dining-room door, did hope it would make her smile, did believe it would make her laugh, and was quite vexed to find that it did not.
CHAPTER 33
READER, MUST I NOW show the fuss-fuss that went on as the massa and missus of the plantation named Amity finally took their leave from this Caribbean island? Do you desire to hear the squealing of Caroline Goodwin one last time within this tale, as she directs their belongings loaded up on to the carriage? ‘Byron, be careful, be very careful, boy, that is very valuable . . . Slower, Elias, do not run . . . Robert, where are you? Elias, where is your master? . . .’
Or shall we pass on by to a quieter place? To find our July sitting a little distance from the garden, within the cooling shade of a tree, regarding all this commotion