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.
* * *
Richard Mason taught me one of my first lessons of Jamaica that next morning by arriving almost before I had risen from bed.
I was learning that Creoles indeed make the most of early mornings, because the heat and humidity enervate a person within only a few hours after rising.
Sukey provided us enough breakfast for an army: potatoes, plantains (to which I had to be introduced), yams, turtle steak (also a new delicacy), pickled salmon, and bread—and coffee, of course—more like an English dinner than a breakfast, but one the English Creoles believe will fortify them against the strain of the heat.
It seems that so many Europeans die within their first few years from the inhospitable climate or the various fevers that afflict the place that it is called “the graveyard of Europe.” My father had never warned me of that.
However, what I had most to fear was being carried off by mosquitoes.
Despite the netting around my bed, the constant whining of those devilish insects had kept me awake nearly the whole night, and in the morning I was covered with bites.
Richard took one look at me when he arrived and chuckled knowingly.
“They do like fresh English blood,” he said.
“But don’t worry, they’ll get off you as soon as you begin to taste like the rest of us, and then they’ll be gone searching for fresher meat.
” He suggested I tell Sukey to burn tobacco or Indian corn in my bedroom to drive out those nasty night flyers.
Richard had a pleasant and easy manner, and I quite liked him straightaway.
Though the Mason family estate was some ten miles west of the city, Richard told me that he made his home in Spanish Town, intimating that he hated country life and was bored with plantation operations.
His lack of interest struck a note with me: I remembered my father mentioning that his friend Jonas Mason had a son who was not fit for overseeing a plantation.
But Richard and I got on quite well, and I found his friendship and knowledge to be invaluable in those first days while I was trying to get my bearings.
As we spoke, our conversation came around to the topic of his sister.
Richard enthused that a more beautiful woman could not be imagined—those were his exact words.
Older or younger? I asked, in an offhand sort of way.
He smiled, and his gaze went off in another direction, as if he were remembering fond childhood scenes.
A bit older, he said. Well, I was a bit older than he, I guessed, and that seemed to me a very good sign.
“Ah,” I said casually, “and is her husband also a planter?”
Richard’s smile changed slightly, not so fond anymore. “She is not married,” he responded. “Nor promised.”
I let it go then, but after he left I played the conversation over and over again in my mind. A more beautiful woman could not be imagined, and neither married nor promised. What young man in my position would not rise to that? And, all the better, she carried already my father’s blessing.
I also learned from Richard that the “small” plantation I had come to own was “only” seven hundred acres, what in Yorkshire would have been a good-size farm.
Though it lacked a great house, it was adjacent to the Mason plantation, which went by the name of Valley View.
Valley View was two thousand acres and stood at the head of a river valley, from which one could see all the way to the sea.
In time, Sukey came to take the dishes away and replace them with a pitcher of grog.
I was already beginning to like the stuff, perhaps because in Jamaica one always adds lime and sometimes sugar as well.
As she moved around the table, I noticed Richard’s eyes following her; she was indeed an attractive woman, her skin smooth and walnut colored, her dark hair pulled back into a bun from which a few tendrils had escaped, her expression both pleasant and modest. I could guess where his imagination had gone—or for all I knew, it was a memory from experience.
For my part, I had never cared for dark women; I saw enough darkness every time I caught my reflection in a glass.
From the time I had had a crush on little Alma at the mill, I had always preferred light skin and hair.
When Sukey had finished and retreated, Richard leaned close to me and grinned. “She was your father’s, you know.”
“My father’s?” I repeated stupidly.
“She could be yours, if you want her. She has good breeding.” He leaned back in his chair, grinning.
“A handsome woman, quite pleasant to be with, sweet voice, does not ask for much. And yes,” he went on, “I know Sukey well. I grew up with her; she came from our plantation, but the time came when my father found another place for her. Your father took her.”
I looked back at the doorway through which Sukey had disappeared.
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” Richard went on.
“Men do not always get away from the plantations to the city as often as they might wish, if you understand my meaning. And their wives are often spoiled and not so interested in pleasing a husband once he has been caught. Of course,” he hastened to add, “my sister is not such a woman, not by any means.”
But Richard’s sister was not at all what I was thinking of. “Sukey was your father’s mistress?” I asked.
He laughed. “No. No, not at all. She is his daughter.”