The Long Song - By Andrea Levy Page 0,15

fever. It was fear of cracking my plate further that made me stop.

‘Miss July, please put down the bag,’ said she. ‘This is your son’s home and you are welcome here. And you know this. Thomas meant no ill by you.’

Now, reader, although I have suffered hardships much greater than wrestling with Lillian—who would, let me assure you, have been no match for me if our ages had been equal—still I ache. All of my bones have voice to speak to me. Even the smallest of them chats the language of pain. But I bear it as best an old woman can. Yet that quarrel sent me to my bed with a head sore as an aching heart. Even my son’s apology just throbbed at my ear. I believed my deliverance had come; that my maker, be him deity or devil, desired to hear my tale not written as some fool-fool book but spoken close into his ear.

But a little callaloo soup and a few mouthfuls of stewed goat, saw me much improved. Now, back at my desk, I am fitter than when I was taken.

As I write, I can see that if I tap the nib of this new pen—a fine instrument with an ebony holder which my son sent away for from Montgomery Ward in America—against the side of the inkstand that contains the new bottle of glossy-black ink, then no drip occurs across the page. Come, it makes it much easier to read.

‘Marguerite, Marguerite!’ That is Caroline Mortimer calling out for July. She had resolved to call her slave Marguerite, for she liked the way the name tripped upon her tongue like a trill. Yet it was only Caroline Mortimer who did look upon July’s face to see a Marguerite residing there. And so we must return to my tale.

Caroline Mortimer was reclining upon her daybed too limp from the midday heat to raise her hand to ring the bell. ‘Marguerite,’ she screeched once more, before collapsing with the effort that such bellowing demanded. Reader, many years have passed within my tale and it was now eight, maybe nine, years that Caroline has been living at the great house of the plantation named Amity. Nowadays, the heat from that Jamaican sun made Caroline floppy as a kitten from sun-up to sundown. She no longer had spirit to fight its languid thrall. A little light embroidery or the arranging of a vase of flowers were just too much toil for her.

She lay upon her daybed, wishing that the long window—with its clear view over the lawn to the horizon—was carrying into the room a cooling breeze and not, what she could always hear, the tiresome commotion of negroes. The rhythmic drone of the field slaves’ work songs, a mule braying, the pounding of walking feet, the crack of a lash, the gallop of a horse, a piercing yell, the squealing of a slow moving cart. And, so close about her that it was like a nagging worry within her own head, the clatter and jabber as the indolent house slaves went about . . . well what did they go about? ‘Marguerite,’ she yelled once more.

In the kitchen, the headman, Godfrey, aroused from his nap, licked his top lip to moisten his dry mouth, before gently kicking his foot toward July and saying, ‘Missus calling you.’

July, looking up from her sewing replied, ‘Soon come, me busy.’

When the calling came again, sharp enough for the cook, Hannah, to say ‘Cha,’ from her drowsy sleep, Godfrey leaned forward upon his chair to inspect what July was doing.

‘What you have there?’

‘Missus’s dress. She want it,’ said July.

‘Then go give it.’ said Godfrey.

‘Me can’t, it not ready—it still have three button on.’

The kitchen, like in all great houses upon the island, was a large, dark hut with a wide chimney and wooden jalousies upon the open windows, that was set apart a short distance behind the main house. It took three long strides for Godfrey to go from the kitchen to the house, for he was a tall man with long legs. It was six steps for the less gangling July and the two other chamber girls, Molly and Patience. It was a long, long wearisome trudge for the cook, Hannah. Being summoned into the house to listen upon the list of foodstuffs those big-bellies wished to chew on was her torment. At the great age of sixty Hannah resented all motion but that of round and round her kitchen. But for

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