“I studied law there,” he said. “I shall begin as an attorney and see what that brings for me. It is how my father started and it has served him well.”
“An attorney who manages plantations for absent landowners?”
“Ah then, you understand,” he said with another smile. “There is money to be made in that capacity, as I am sure you know. And you? What are your prospects?”
“My father has a small plantation near Spanish Town, and some other business interests there, and here in Kingston. He owns theBadger Guinea, for example,” I could not resist adding. I had not revealed that to my other shipmates.
Whitledge’s eyebrows rose and another expression came upon his face. “Oh? In the slave trade—before it was outlawed?”
“What makes you say such a thing?” I asked.
“Badger Guinea. The name means it was a Guineaman—a slave ship. You did not know that?”
No, of course I did not.“And they could not change the name after the slave trade ceased, because it’s bad luck,” I mused.
He nodded. “You can count on it. If you had gone belowdecks you might have seen the remains of the fittings that had once held the shackles.”
I could not think what to say. My shock must have shown, for Whitledge leaned closer across the table. “We all have things we prefer not to think about, Rochester. Here, slavery is a necessary evil. It was slavery, after all, that built this beautiful island, and that makes life here so very pleasant for us. It no doubt helped pay for your education at Cambridge. It produces the sugar you have been putting into your tea all your life, and the rum that will be a staple of your life from here on. And speaking of rum, it’s high time to have a bit, is it not?”
“Indeed,” I murmured. I should not have been shocked, but I had not realized the degree to which slavery had infiltrated even my life in England. Sitting there in that busy tavern, I tried to steel myself to the reality that Whitledge took so casually: I could not avoid becoming dependent upon the work of slaves. It was an uncomfortable proposition.
The grog was brought soon enough, but I did not drink it right away. I had never been fond of rum, and that first taste of grog in Jamaica nearly gagged me, but in time I did get used to it. And to the way of life that produces it, I am not proud to say.
After a bounteous meal and more drink than I really wanted, Whitledge and I finally left Kingston on hired horses. It was only a short trip to Spanish Town, even at our slow pace and with occasional pauses as Whitledge pointed out views and characteristics of the island. One of the first things I had learned all those years ago at Black Hill was that escaped slaves, called “Maroons,” often fled to the mountainous center, which was a wilderness into which no white man ever ventured. Now, as we rode along, I saw that region for myself—it is background to everything on the island, in more ways than one—and it does indeed look forbidding: mountains thick with trees and vines, a bluish haze lying over them. But the rest of the island, from the foothills to the sea, is almost entirely domesticated into plantations and cattle pens.
At that time of year the cane stalks had grown higher than a man’s head, rustling and clattering against one another in the wind, and the air was filled with the sounds of hoes chopping weeds in the cane rows and the occasional work chants of the negroes. The fields needed to be weeded constantly, for the weeds benefit from the same conditions that enable the cane to grow so prodigiously. I paused occasionally to watch the backbreaking work, realizing that I would not last half a day working in such humidity and intense sun.
Whitledge was not well acquainted with any of the owners of the plantations we rode past, but he was able to point out each plantation’s great house—which the negroes called the buckra house. There was another new and unsettling experience on that ride: we were rarely out of earshot of the crack of whips. A negro driver strode behind each gang, snapping the whip over their heads every few minutes, and when his whip found a target, there was often a cry of pain, a sound that made my skin flinch in my first few days on the island. I never fully got used to that sound.
By the time Spanish Town came into view, I had become so attached to my friendship with Whitledge that I urged him to stay the night with me and continue on the following morning. But he was adamant, for he was anxious to return to his family and his own home. So we said our good-byes at the edge of Spanish Town, and I watched him go on his way, wondering if in the years ahead I would ever become as attached to Jamaica as he. I had not forgotten my father’s enticing description of Mr. Mason’s daughter, and I hoped that a happy future with a wife and children would transform this strange and exotic place into a home—despite that the word conjured, still, warm memories of Thornfield and its fields and woods and moors.
Chapter 3
Spanish Town is a pleasant enough city, bustling as a capital usually is, but not in the same frenetic way as a port city like Kingston, which itself is a mere shadow of Liverpool or London. Spanish Town’s government buildings overlook a wide and placid square, and nearby was my father’s small and utilitarian town house. As in Liverpool, he had clearly seen little need in Spanish Town to entertain lavishly. Yet, once I had dropped my portmanteau in the entrance hall and surveyed the place, I was struck by how comfortable it seemed. I felt pleased with what had been provided for me, and I could not wait to go over once again the papers that he had sent with me, for they contained all that my life was to be, and I was in a great hurry to get on with it.
I had barely turned around when a young mulatto woman appeared from belowstairs and introduced herself as Sukey. She had been accustomed to running the household when my father was in residence, she said, and I recalled my father mentioning something of the sort. But it was not until I began quizzing her as to what her duties had been and what she expected in the way of payment that the realization struck me: she was a slave and she was mine.
It is an uncomfortable thing to discover that one owns slaves, but I managed to hide my discomfort and forced myself to see her merely as a servant. Indeed, I realized, in Jamaica, where everything was so unfamiliar, she could serve as a guide in my ignorance. “Tell me, please,” I asked her, “what was my father’s daily routine when he was here?”
“Your father rose early, because buckras do not like the heat,” she said. “And after breakfast he goes to his office—you know where that is?”
“I have not yet been there, but he gave me directions.”
“I’ll show you the way. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow would be good. Thank you.”
She lifted my portmanteau to carry it to my room, but I wrested it from her. “I can manage,” I said, mounting the stairs.
“I show you around the house?” she said from behind me.
I turned, realizing she was as unsure of her position with me as I was. “That would be kind,” I said, though I was perfectly capable of exploring the place myself.
While she was showing me the house, a young man by the name of Alexander appeared and carried the rest of my baggage up to my room, but instead of unpacking immediately, I left the house to explore the city that was to be my new home. The sun was low in the sky, but the air was still quite warm, and I spent the waning hours wandering. All was so different: the way the sunlight pierced a path between the buildings and heated their surfaces so that they radiated its warmth, the way the sky could be cloudless one moment and dropping buckets of rain the next, the calls of the street vendors, the sounds and colors of strange birds. I could not have felt less at home.
When I returned to the town house it was late, and a pitcher of grog had been set out for me, along with the calling card of one Richard Mason, with a handwritten note saying that he would come the next morning to make my acquaintance and to offer whatever help I needed to accustom myself to my new life. I could only assume that my father was behind this kindness, and I went to bed that night overwhelmed by all the strangeness that surrounded me.
***
