ugly for those fair occasions. Yet although July always feared telling the truth to a white person (for her fictions were often better understood), something within his manner—a furrow in his brow? his hand too tight upon the reins? his foot tapping upon the board? (she could not tell you what)—implored her to say, ‘No’.
What a breath July did exhale when he said, ‘I am so glad to hear it, Miss July.’ And when, with peevish disdain, he went on saying, ‘Those dances are not a place that a Christian person should attend,’ July all at once supposed she was beginning to understand this particular white man.
‘No,’ she said, ‘me prefer to rest at home.’ And then, in a moment of sweet inspiration added, ‘Me does like to stay home to read me Bible.’
His face lit with such clear delight that some in England might have thought him disloyal for letting such obvious pleasure glow upon it. ‘Your Bible. You enjoy to read the Bible, Miss July?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she carried on.
‘Do you have a favourite story from that good book?’
‘Yes,’ July said without hesitation. ‘Me like the story of how the whole world did be made best of all.’
In truth, there was no indecision within July for this was the only story she knew from that holy book. When Caroline Mortimer was teaching July her letters she at first used that big, heavy, dusty tome for July’s instruction. But the little print was so hard for July to read or construe, that the missus began to drift into dozing long before God rested from his labours upon the seventh day. Her missus then swapped the book from which July was to recite, for one where two silly sisters—white women who were required to do no work—did spend their days fretting and crying over the finding of husbands. The missus’s Bible was now used only for the wayward to place their hand upon it to swear they speak in truth (come, Molly did have to slap it so often she thought it a drum), but rarely did it open for stories to escape it.
‘Are there any other passages you enjoy?’ Robert Goodwin continued. July raised up her eyes, as if to ponder upon his question. ‘The story of the Good Samaritan, perhaps?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, me like it very much,’ said July.
‘And what about Moses parting the Red Sea?’
‘That is a very good tale.’
‘Or perhaps the story of the three little pigs?’ he wondered.
‘Me does like them all,’ July told him. ‘But the resting ’pon the seventh day tale be me favoured.’ And he, glancing at her sideways, did grin so wide a smile upon her that she feared she may have amused him in some way.
So July decided she would speak no more unless he continued to press her. The beat of the pony’s hooves clopping upon the road and the rhythm within the squeaking and creaking wooden cart made a queer sort of music as they travelled. And although July was wishing to appear as demure as a white lady touring within a carriage as she sat with her hands resting together upon her lap, she was mightily aware that the overseer’s leg was pressing hard against her own. She could feel it tensing stiff as he held himself steady with the effort of guiding the cart and pony. Once a tricky movement was complete she felt the strong muscle of his thigh ease and relax. His jacket sleeves were rolled up about his elbows and exposed the tiny black hairs upon his bare forearms to quiver with the breeze of his motion; while his hands, gripping the reins, were held dainty as if leading a woman to dance. And July did sniff a sweet scent of wood-smoke drifting from him.
But as she craftily glanced upon his face and beheld his eyelashes—which were so dark and lush as to appear like a silk fringe upon his lids—she was at once aware that if she was noticing all about him, then would not he be slyly assessing her; the badly stitched tear in her ugly grey skirt, the tatty red kerchief upon her head hiding her picky-picky hair, her still-too-broad nose, her dull-brown eyes and, of course, her black skin? July became rigid with unease as the cart bumped upon the road and gently threw them together—sometimes her against him and sometimes him against her.
When the watchman’s stone hut at the gate of Amity appeared in the near