firmly, ‘And be sure to lay the best linen cloth upon the table. The Irish linen should raise Elizabeth Wyndham’s envy quite nicely.’
From the moment that July had opened her eyes upon that day, she had found herself put to work. She had had to wake Molly! Usually, Molly did wake her by slapping her flat palm against July’s ear until it rang like a bell. But this day, July stood above the sleeping Molly’s open mouth—her snoring releasing all manner of foul odour into July’s face—and carefully dropped a small stone into Molly’s gaping maw. Molly woke into that dark morning choking—too busy coughing to realise she had not breathed in the tiny object for herself.
July went to the kitchen where Patience placed within her busy-busy hands a tray of sour oranges. She required July and Molly to clean the hall floor. And July is a lady’s maid! There was no protest to make to Godfrey that was not met with his shaking head, for this was an extraordinary day. So, on her knees July had had to go. The cut upon her thumb filled with smarting as she rubbed the juice from the halved oranges into the wooden floor—it pained her bad as a lash-stroke rubbed with salt pickle, yet still she had to polish until the shine rose bright as sunlight upon water. And, all the while they polished, Molly insisted upon beating her coconut brush against the floor and singing loud in her no-tune voice, ‘Mosquito one, mosquito two, mosquito jump inna hot callalu.’ It made the nasty toil harder for July, not easier as the fool-fool Molly declared it would.
Twelve people for a fancy feast was enough to intrude upon the slow routine of the kitchen in the sad-to-hell massa’s house. But to snatch the two washerwomen, Lucy and Florence, from the province of their stream—to stand them shifting upon their bare feet in the corner of the sweltering kitchen, their wide-eyes staring perplexed upon the pile of massacred fowl, rabbits and turtles to be cooked—was a cruelty.
For these two women, trying to obey the peculiar orders that were barked upon them, ducked with each command as if the words were striking them. And, no matter how Hannah yelled upon them to raise the flour for the pastry from fluttering fingers and roll it soft with light intent, Lucy and Florence treated that dough like a soiled undergarment that must be cleaned. They banged it, they beat it, they swung it around their head and dashed it against a stone.
Hannah had little time for pastry, for all the hucksters came in upon the kitchen that day in an eager, yet lazy, line to sell their wares.
The negro woman with skin so black it was blue called ‘mango gwine pass’ as she strode to the kitchen door in her gaudy striped skirt with a basket upon her head. Showing Hannah the plumpest of the mangos from her provision ground, she bent slyly to the old cook to murmur what she had heard from the preacher-man about them all soon to be free. Whispered close, yet spoken fast, Hannah did not hear every word—something was lost about the king and the massa—but she nodded with feigned understanding.
The mulatto woman who had bought her own freedom and a cart upon the same day and sold cedar boxes full of sugar cakes frosted in pink, white and yellow—the one who was saving for a donkey so it was no longer she that had to push-pull the produce—she had heard that it was the King who said there were to be no more slaves.
The fisherman with his barrels full of blue-grey shrimp that slopped puddles of water over Hannah’s feet as he lifted up the squirming crustaceans for inspection, had heard nothing. Come, this skinny man with one leg shorter than the other, did not even attend the chapel in town. But that free coloured woman with brown skin scoured to light, who informed any who would listen, ‘Me never been no slave’, the one who rode in a cart, pulled by a ready-to-dead mule, and twirled upon her parasol as her jars of guava and lime pickle, ginger jelly and pepper sherry were lifted to the light to be inspected, said all this chat-chat was nonsense—that the white massas were correct, the King-man had said nothing about them being free.
Many came to the kitchen that morning with their yam, plantain, artichokes, pineapples, sweet orange, green banana, cheese, and coffee