knew the insolence of that sound very well. He raised his palms to implore them to quell it. But angry muttering and chattering did begin to swell from that crowd. Some even walked away. Robert Goodwin had to yell raucous as a street caller to be heard when he lastly cried, ‘But know this. When a man pays money for labour he will only employ those who will work diligently and cheerfully. Heed me well. Diligently and cheerfully.’
Caroline Mortimer, seated composed upon a chair throughout this whole announcement, had been gazing up upon this new overseer with the rapture of a lonely boy before a shooting star. She began to clap when he had finally finished, but soon stopped when she felt a hundred pairs of black eyes look upon her. Oh, what a storm negroes did conjure for the missus. So many savage eyes. She nearly passed out at the sight. She commenced to waft her sweet-scented handkerchief back and forth under her nose with some vigour, as she asked her overseer, ‘Do you think we have now restored their best feelings to me, Mr Goodwin? Do you think all will be well now?’
And her new overseer, smiling broadly while dabbing sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief, said confidently, ‘Oh yes, madam. Absolutely. I have not one doubt upon the matter.’
CHAPTER 21
‘MARGUERITE.’ JULY HEARD HER missus call as fearsome black clouds reached across Amity to encase its lands, firm as a lid being sealed upon a box. The wind whipped the bamboos until they bowed within it. It stripped the cotton tree of all but clinging vines and compelled those leaves to dance. Lightning—those devils’ sunbeams—cracked with startling, jagged veins before rain began spilling fierce as if overturned clumsy from a colossal pail. And her missus cried out again, ‘Marguerite, come here at once. I am calling.’ Streams ran everywhere July looked—snaking around bush, stone and tree to find the quickest path. Four, six, eight and one hundred-legged creeping things crawled to mass within the wet; lizards, excited, jumped from hidey-holes to feast, and mosquitoes waking from puddles launched as vicious mist. ‘Marguerite, where are you? Marguerite . . .’ After sultry heat, it was now chill enough for July to give a little shiver. She raised herself slowly from the stool upon the veranda with her skilful timing. Her missus found July dashing in from . . . somewhere; eyes wide with concern to do her missus’s bidding . . . of course.
‘There you are, Marguerite, did you hear me call?’
‘Oh me run so, missus, me be out of breath,’ July puffed.
‘Go to Mr Goodwin’s house and ask if he would care to dine with me this evening. A heifer was killed in the pen so Molly has some beef that must be eaten. I know he will be interested in beef.’
Caroline Mortimer had begun to find such interest in her plantation that her daybed became quite neglected—come, its horse-hair was at last beginning to recover its shape. For, standing upon the veranda straining to look over the fields, peering through the windows or pacing the long room to find reasons why July must get a message to Robert Goodwin at his house—‘At once, Marguerite, at once!’—was how her missus now filled her day. ‘Perhaps I should enquire if everything is to Mr Goodwin’s liking at his house? Yes, tell him to pay me a visit . . . I must know of the new book-keeper the overseer has hired. Tell him to ride over to me on his way to the fields . . . A fine mistress I would be if I did not insist my overseer come to tell me how many hogsheads are going to the port today . . . Byron said that the negroes’ pigs have got into the fields again. Run and tell Mr Goodwin to deliver me a full account of any losses to the crop . . .’ And so on and so on.
July knew every stone, bush, hole and curve on the winding path that led to the overseer’s dwelling. In dry weather it was eight hundred steps from the spreading tamarind tree at the great house to the sweet orange tree that shaded the wooden steps that led into his door. But when she was forced to walk it in a storm—when the wind gusted so that she had to fasten herself to a trunk of a tree and crawl to hide within the refuge