of this blessed numbness and a pain sharp as a dog sinking its teeth deep into the flesh of her thighs, would seize her. Only rising from out the pose and stamping hard upon the ground did relieve it. Yet each time July was forced to perform this curative dance the artist, looking out from behind his canvas, would let forth a deep moaning sigh. And Caroline would scold, ‘Stay still! Stay still! Stop moving!’
Now, although July was quite able to cut down her missus with a look that exclaimed, ‘You wan’ try bending your fat white batty down like this for hour and hour and hour, cha!’ she was no longer required to. For a troubled glance—or even just the hint of one—in the direction of her Mr Goodwin . . . her Mr Big-big blue-eye . . . her Mr Sweet-sweet massa, was all that was needed to have him, with full masterful bluster, defend her with the reply, ‘Can you not see how her pose is painful to maintain, Caroline?’
‘But she is prolonging the difficulty by continually fidgeting. I manage to stay quite still.’
‘You are comfortably seated. If Miss July were comfortably sitting then I am in no doubt that she too could remain as immovable as you.’
‘Do you propose the negro to sit within this picture now?’
‘All I am saying, Caroline, is that if Miss July had been left to stand next to me instead of being forced into this ridiculous pose, then she would have been able to hold that position for longer without it becoming stiff and painful to her.’
‘But Robert, it is Mr Bear’s idea to have her model in that way—not my own . . .’
And so on and so on. These arguments did not erupt every time that July moved, but they occurred enough for the artist to roll his eyes and wearily rest his head upon his hands for the duration of the ill-tempered scene; and for our July to throw her arms about Mr Goodwin’s neck the next time they were alone, and peck a hundred kisses upon his cheek for not permitting the missus to ‘insolence’ her.
Husband was July’s favoured name for Robert Goodwin—for every time she said it, ‘Come sit, husband . . . please start nyam, husband . . . oh, hush now, husband,’ he responded obediently by calling her wife. ‘You are my real wife,’ he told her. ‘This is my real home,’ he said of their damp little room under the house. What would happen if he did not find her waiting for him every afternoon after conch blow? July had wanted to know. Would he search for her? He surely would, he told her. Would he cry? Boo hoo-hoo, he had said.
So July once hid herself. She lit no candle and squatted within the farthest dark corner, behind a chair. In he came to search for her, keen as a miner in quest of a seam of gold. He called her name but she did not move. ‘Wife?’ he said as he lit a candle to breach the gloom. ‘Miss July, where are you?’ he asked at the open door. So fretful did he become that he looked grave as a pickney lost from home. July could not endure this teasing, for she longed to have her arms about him, to feel her face against his warm neck. She wished to scratch her nails down that ribbon of dark hair that ran from his chest to his navel, and watch his white skin streak pink. She wanted to hear his moans as his hands upon her pinched and slapped.
She abandoned the foolish hiding game and pushed over the chair in her eagerness to have him. And as she captured him firm from behind, he squealed with surprise. He pushed her down on to the mattress. His weight on top of her was how she liked it. Unable to move under the bulk of him was what she loved. Him lying so heavy upon her that she could not even inhale breath, while his manhood rose up thick and strong between them, was what she required.
But her husband protested at the prickle of her bed. ‘My wife will not sleep upon something so coarse?’ he said, and bid his boy Elias carry down a plump horse-hair mattress from the rooms above. It was soon followed by a wooden bed frame with a headboard elegantly carved with two birds.