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.
‘A boiled ham and a turkey, or maybe two,’ the missus carried on, ‘and turtle served in the shell, if we must, but could we not enquire after beef in town? Stewed ducks—four if they can be got. And cheese, did I say cheese?’
These were not the only instructions the missus had delivered upon the matter of the Christmas dinner. Come, if it were, no Jamaican planter would think this a spree. Candles were to be amassed in every corner of the room. ‘I have seen it done at Prosperity Plantation,’ the missus told Godfrey. ‘Upwards of two hundred lit in a room smaller than our dining hall. And Elizabeth Wyndham’s husband produces fewer hogsheads per year than my brother. There are to be as many as can be got. And has the pig been butchered?’
‘Oh yes, missus.’
‘Then let us have it roasted, not salted, if it will keep.’ There was to be malt liquor, wine, porter, cider, brandy and rum, watermelon, mango, pawpaw, naseberry, soursop, granadilla fruit. ‘And make sure the preserve has come from England. Strawberry or damson. Do not serve guava, ginger or that ghastly sorrel jelly. I’m so tired of Jamaican jams.’
Hannah had stopped listening, for the need to shout, ‘And me to fix-up all this? You a gut-fatty, cha!’ at her missus was becoming overpowering within her. Hannah had trudged that vast distance from the kitchen into the long room of the great house to stand, weary and miserable, just inside its door. The sunlight that floated sharp shadows across the wood floor—flashing through the crystal glasses and flaring across a silver salver—made her eyes blink and water, for she was unaccustomed to this dazzling light. She did not look upon Caroline Mortimer’s face, but kept her eyes fixed firmly on her own crossed hands—for these two calloused and worn claws were the only things within that room that were not annoying to her. But as her missus spoke to the ceiling, as if reading a list from some celestial sheet an angel held there, Hannah lifted her eyes now and again, for she became entranced by the blond curls at each side of her missus’s head that bounced like small birds pecking at her shoulder.
‘We will need plum pudding,’ she told Hannah before adding, ‘Now, do you remember how to make it?’
Plum pudding, Hannah thought. Plum pudding . . . plum pudding. Come, let me think. How you make plum pudding? A little fruit, a little molasses, some cornmeal, eggs, plenty rum. Mash it up a bit. Put this mess in that silly round mould the missus did give her the first Christmas she arrived, and boil it until the water does run dry. And when the thing hard, then it is done.
‘I do not want it to be like last year’s, for that was not plum pudding,’ her missus pleaded. ‘It should be light, not hard as a medicine ball. I could show you if it were needed,’ the missus said.
This impudence coming from the missus’s mouth nearly caused Hannah to look up into her face. The last occasion that the missus did cross that breach betwixt the house and the kitchen was to show