I realized then that I was truly at last in the Caribbean, the place I had so often dreamed of at Black Hill, and I could not wait to see how my life would unfold. In the next few days we encountered other islands, to which we sailed close for safety, in case we should find pirate ships bearing down upon us. At Black Hill, pirates had seemed impossibly exciting, but now I understood what terrors they might hold. That part of the Caribbean was still infested with such ships, often schooners—favored for their speed and maneuverability—armed with a single twenty-four pounder that moved upon a swivel. Under Mr. Lincoln’s eye we had once built a wooden model of such a weapon, which is perhaps how I was able to notice that one of ourBadger Guinea’s guns was itself an imitation. When I questioned the captain, he confessed that the ship had indeed lost one of its guns in a fierce storm on its last sailing, and this replacement was what they called a “Quaker,” for, even if ordered into battle, it would not fight.
Finally, more than six weeks after our departure, we sailed into Kingston Harbor. My heartbeat slowed and my eyes watered and I felt my hands gripping the rail as I stared at the pale, colonnaded buildings along the harbor, and saw palm trees up close for the first time. Stafford and Osmon were still below, packing, but I had done that the evening before, as I was determined to be on deck when we sailed into a place about which I had read and dreamed so much.
“Will someone be meeting you?” came a voice from behind.
I turned and saw it was Whitledge. I had had so little conversation with him that I had not even recognized his voice.
“I am not sure,” I said, a bit embarrassed to admit that I had no idea.
“Where will you be staying?” he persisted, and it dawned on me that he was actually being kind—was truly interested in me—despite all my rebuffs of him during the voyage.
“There is a house in Spanish Town I have access to,” I replied, not quite able to bring myself to say that it was, indeed, my own house now. I had the key to the house in my possession, and the address of it, as well as that of my father’s attorney—now mine—on papers in my purse.
“You ride, I assume,” he said.
“Of course.”
“I go beyond Spanish Town, to Clarendon. We can ride together as far as Spanish Town, if you wish.”
Suddenly I was grateful for an opportunity for companionship, and I turned more fully toward him. “I’d like that very much,” I said.
“Your friends are not traveling with you beyond Kingston?”
“No, they have other destinations.”
He raised his eyebrows at this but said only, “Meet me at Harty’s Tavern at noon. You will see it soon enough when you get ashore; it’s close to the customhouse. We shall have some dinner and then make our travel arrangements from there.”
“Very good,” I said with genuine gratitude.
He turned away and I watched him go. He did not seem like such a bad sort after all, and in this unfamiliar place I would need all the companionship and advice I could get. Stafford and Osmon, fine enough friends as they were, were even less able to make their ways in Jamaica than I was. In that respect, Whitledge was a godsend that I should have taken advantage of earlier.
Chapter 2
The first thing one notices when one arrives in the West Indies from England is the light, and what it does to everything one sees. It is as if one has entered into a different world, where a veil has been removed, and the sky is suddenly more intensely blue, the sea the deepest turquoise, the buildings starker white, the flora more vibrantly colored. One is assaulted with so much at once: the dialects of the citizens, the screech of strange and brilliant-hued birds—even in the city—and the vast array of exotic fruits and vegetables laid out for purchase: pomegranates, pineapples, avocados, mangoes, coconuts; the sheer variety of it all bewilders the mind while entrancing the senses. And the smells! They were not the odors of an English summer: roses and strawberries and new-cut hay. Although I could not yet identify the ones that greeted me now, they were richer, more intense—well matched for the kaleidoscope of colors on the island. Only the smell of horse manure in the streets was the same, and even there, with the hotter sun, the odors were stronger and sharper. A passing shower struck—a downpour, really—but nearly as soon as it had started it was over and the sun shone strong and clear again. It was not at all like a gentle summer rain in England, and I could not have been more disoriented.
I had expected to see Africans on the island, of course, but I had not anticipated Chinese and East Indians as well, for there was at that time in the West Indies an unquenchable thirst for workers who could be paid near-slave wages, and shiploads of them had been brought in from East and South Asia.
I said hurried farewells to Stafford and Osmon, with vague promises among us to remain in contact. I gave them the address of my town house, and I watched them leave, making their ways in opposite directions. I did notice that they were nearly the only whites walking down the street, but it was only later that I learned how shameful it is to be a “walking buckra”—a white pedestrian—in Jamaica.
Harty’s Tavern was, as Whitledge had said, quite easy to find, but it was not yet noon, so I found myself a bit of shade and spent much of an hour just watching the bustle around me. Despite the August heat and humidity, which I found quite oppressive, negroes were hard at work on the docks nearby. They were as black as night, most of them, bare chested and dressed in only rough-cloth trousers, torn and faded. They wore no shoes, and yet they seemed to walk carelessly about without complaint. There was a gang leader, brown skinned instead of black, and wearing a sleeveless jacket and a hat, but still barefoot, holding a whip in his hand, but he seemed not to use it except to crack it above their heads to keep them moving, as one might do to a cart horse.
Few people were on the street at early midday, and those women who were in sight—nearly all of them negroes—carried parasols against the sun as any English lady would. Carriages that might have been seen in Maysbeck or Liverpool passed, carrying white passengers and driven by black men, and, strangely, there was generally a black man trotting along behind. I felt entirely disconcerted by these familiar trappings of English life exported to a world so different: the intense sun, the heat, the aromas, the constant reminders of slavery; and I wondered if I would ever get used to it all.
Shortly after noon Whitledge appeared with a dray, and he immediately set the driver to loading up my possessions beside Whitledge’s own pile of boxes and wooden trunks. He watched the operation for a few minutes, until he seemed satisfied that all was being done properly, and finally the two of us made our way into Harty’s. The dray set off toward Spanish Town ahead of us, its negro driver hunched over in his seat.
By way of conversation, I noted cheerfully that that was a good amount of baggage Whitledge had brought.
“Ah yes,” he said as we entered the indoor gloom. “My father is a magistrate in May Pen—that’s the central town of Clarendon. He requested me to bring a number of official papers and books of record.” We found a table in the crowded tavern. “And,” he added, “I have two sisters who of course desire the newest fashions from London. It will seem Christmas in August when I arrive home.”
“How long have you been gone?”
“Four years.”
“You never returned in four years?”
He smiled at that. “You have learned how lengthy a trip it is, I should think, and sometimes it can be quite dangerous. Of course,” he added with a sly smile, “there are charms in England that one does not want to miss.”
I ignored the implications, for I had more immediate interests. “You were at Oxford, were you not? What will you be doing now that you have returned?”
