Joseph Knight. James Robertson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      He stood up, knocking his chair over, and swayed out of the room to be sick. The others watched him go, only vaguely interested in seeing if he made it outdoors. If he did not, it would just be one more mess for the maids to clear up in the morning.

      ‘All Davie is saying,’ said John, ‘is we should take more care of them. That’s Christian if nothing else.’

      ‘Oh man, dinna let them near Christ!’ Kinloch exploded. ‘Christ and kindness are troublemakers on a plantation. If ye gie them a sniff at Christ, they’ll say they’re saved and that makes them as good as ony white man. Treat them wi kindness and they’ll repay ye wi idleness, complaints, grievances. It’s but a step frae there to resentment and plotting.’

      ‘Kindness doesn’t enter into it,’ said James Wedderburn. ‘And I’m not interested in saving their souls either. I want as much work out of my slaves as you. I want as much money out of the crop. The best way to get that is healthy slaves. How much does a slave cost? A good one, a young, fit, Africa-born Coromantee?’

      ‘Fifty pound,’ said Kinloch.

      ‘Sixty,’ said James.

      ‘Ye’re being robbed.’

      ‘Well, give or leave the ten pounds, it’s a high price. I want that slave to last ten years at least. Perhaps twenty.’

      ‘Away!’

      ‘I have to season him for a year –’

      ‘Six months.’

      ‘– feed him and clothe him while he lives. I want him free of worms, yellow fever, the flux, poxes, consumption, the yaws – anything that stops him working. If I whip him every time he is ill, that is more time lost while he mends. Whip a slave for theft, or insolence, or running away, or refusing to work – of course. But let’s be sure we whip them for the right things. Oh, and I want him to make me a lot more slave bairns too. I don’t practise kindness, George. I practise economy.’

      Except when it comes to your own slave bairns, John thought, but he said nothing.

      ‘I prefer common sense. If ye treat a black soft, ye soften yoursel. Then ye think ye’ll ease their labour a bit, gie them better hooses. The next thing ye’re beginning to doubt the haill institution.’

      ‘You’re over-harsh, George,’ said John. ‘We are not tyrants.’

      ‘Aye we are,’ said Kinloch. ‘We maist certainly are. We hae to be. It’s the only honest way. If ye look at the thing true, ye’ll agree.’

      

      Later, long after Hodge had been put to bed with a bucket beside his head, and Kinloch and Fyfe, blazing drunk and barely able to stand, had somehow mounted their horses and trotted off homeward, the four Wedderburns played a few rather listless hands of rummy. They were all staying the night at Glen Isla. In the darkness the singing and drumming from the slave huts rose and faded on a light breeze.

      James kept lifting his head, as if trying to catch something of the songs, almost as if he were envious of a better party. Peter pulled out his dirty book and, between turns, studied the pages for salacious passages, silently mouthing the French as he read. Alexander yawned constantly. Only John was concentrating much on the cards.

      At last James flung down his hand. ‘Damn it, John, Peter was right. I could devour that Peach just now. Or any of them. Let’s go down for them.’

      John shook his head. ‘That, I think, even George Kinloch would think unwise at this time of night.’

      ‘Well, can we not send for them?’

      ‘No one to send. Unless you want to ask the formidable Phoebe. No? You’ll just have to suffer alone then. Drink some more wine.’

      Sandy stood up. ‘I’m for my bed,’ he said. He sidled out, clutching the other French book.

      ‘Don’t be up all night now,’ Peter called after him, but this drew no response.

      ‘He’s writing a novelle himself, I think,’ Peter told the others.

      ‘What?’ James frowned at him.

      ‘He’s writing something anyway. He’s been scribbling away in a book since Christmas. But he keeps it hidden and he denies it if you ask.’

      ‘Between that and his sketches, he’s becoming quite an artist,’ James said derisively.

      ‘Leave him alone,’ said John. ‘We’ve all little enough privacy here as it is. Let him be.’

      James yawned. ‘I’m for my bed, too. By the way, Geordie Kinloch was right about one thing.’

      ‘What?’ John asked.

      ‘About us being tyrants. Benevolent we may be, but tyrants is what we are.’

      ‘James, you’re not surely feeling guilty?’

      ‘Not a bit of it. And it’s not madness either. It’s a natural state of affairs. It has to be. God’s providence. What other reason for such a distinction between the races? So we may as well make the best of it.’

      ‘But,’ John said, ‘it behooves us to behave like civilised men. A lass like Peach – whip her if she’s troublesome, but why mistreat her if she is a good girl? That is my view, and will continue to be.’

      ‘No shitting in the hall for you, then,’ James said. It was hard to tell if he was mocking John again. There was a trace of laughter in his voice, in the brightness of his eyes, but his mouth was unsmiling. He stood up, drank off the last of his wine.

      ‘By God, though, a night like this, does it not make you yearn for a wife?’

      ‘There’s Mrs Hodge in Savanna unoccupied,’ said Peter, glancing up. ‘You should have ridden off with the others.’

      This did finally produce a laugh from James. ‘You are trespassing on the bounds of propriety, Peter. Be sensible. Why would I want all the trouble of seducing a white woman? In a country like this? And as for a wife, well, I was jesting. I don’t have the patience for that. Not yet, at least.’

       Dundee, May 1802

      The weather had finally turned, it was warm and sunny, and the four younger Wedderburn girls were in town. They were in high spirits at the prospect of a day in Dundee. Their half-sister Margaret had avoided having to chaperone them by pointing out that there was not room inside the carriage for them all, and that she had no desire to go. So Aeneas MacRoy was accompanying them, sitting up with the stableman, William Wicks, who was at the reins. At the old West Port the girls decanted, and MacRoy, after telling Wicks to drive to the shore where the horses could feed and rest before the return journey, got down stiff-legged from his seat and followed them at a discreet distance. He had been instructed by Lady Wedderburn, who was in bed with a cold, to keep an eye on her girls: Dundee could be rough, even in daylight, and MacRoy’s task was to make sure the lassies did not wander away from the main streets and СКАЧАТЬ