Strange Music (19 page)

Instinctively I feel we must be open to a new age, not turn our backs on this grimness that we as a family have sustained. Walls of silence have been erected and these must be knocked down. I shall either write against the tide, or drown. I have a loyalty to liberty, to justice, to my own self. Yet to act in conformity with my moral values will outrage my beloved Papa. He is the embodiment of religious principle, a truer more devout believer could not walk this earth. To him I am a blessed one, a handmaid of the Lord's. No one could love me better.

I am to remain confined but it is a jail of my own making for I am
not
a slave, and my pain
cannot
be compared to that of the poor Negroes. It is not through life's privileges that I can reach the poor and deprived but through pain – and the high art of poetry. Poetry brings self and life into judgment. I have a vision of a poet.
A poet's vision
.

In my fingertips I take the letter Henrietta passes from the silver server. The handwriting looks familiar. Suddenly I experience a terrible sensation, and know the letter is the portent of another awful happening.

Because I cannot see for tears Henrietta proceeds. ‘
Twenty-second of June, 1839
.' Pausing to wipe her own tears from the parchment, her speech stifled by whimpering, Henrietta commences again. ‘
Twenty-second of June, 1839
 . . .
I have deeply felt my absence from you all at Torquay; but when I know how painful a parting scene would be to us all and how injurious it might be to dear Ba, I rather rejoice we have escaped it
.'

Henrietta stifles a moan. She searches her pocket for a handkerchief with which to blow her congested nose. ‘
My most affectionate love to dear Ba who I am sure will bear this temporary separation with patience for our sakes . . . Write to me regularly about Ba once a fortnight and commence on the first of July, you well know my anxiety and will, I am sure, not disappoint me . . . Twenty-sixth of June. Once more my own dearest Henrietta and Ba, God bless you both, we sail in two hours from this: That God in His mercy may protect and return our dear Ba is the earnest prayer of your fondly attached Sam
.'

Although Henrietta has done her best to scold me out of them, I suffer horrible forebodings that Sam and Stormie's sudden and secretive departure will serve to bring us more bad news. Sam is to reside again at Cinnamon Hill, Stormie at Cambridge Estate. Matthew Farquharson will relinquish charge of Cinnamon Hill on Sam's return.

I feel furious for a time that Henrietta had not left my bedside to say farewell to them, but she assures me she did not know of our brothers' departure until this woeful letter emerged. How am I to accept that it is better for me this way? I shall always be angry. Will I ever see them again? Henrietta says she is angry too.

Could their departure not have been delayed? I ask Henrietta. Well, she says, she doesn't know. My beloved brothers, Sam and Stormie, my dear, dear Stormie who shrinks from public examination on account of the hesitation of his speech. Gone. Without farewells!

Bro says this evening that, like Henrietta and me, he received no warning of Sam and Stormie's departure from London. ‘Preparing to partake of the Holy Sacrament might have sent Sam in quieter service into the world,' Bro says. ‘I advised him to make the preparations.'

‘I could not agree more,' Henrietta replies.

To Henrietta I say, ‘But the hour for that is now passed. The only consolation we all share is that Papa did not force Bro to set sail for Jamaica.'

Because I am too weakened by grief to write, I have asked Henrietta to tell Sam how we feel; that it is hard upon us indeed that during all the time he was in England he should only have spent a few short days with us in Torquay; that we wish his visit to England had been postponed until next year; that his and Stormie's coming here was just to wish us good-bye – a very painful pleasure to be sure.

Dr. Barry is suggesting I reside in Hastings or Southampton for the remainder of the summer. Unbelievable! Southampton is a fearful place, I have told Papa so.

They considered me too fatigued to wish my brothers farewell yet are prepared to drag me about the country like some sort of package when all I desire, now Sam and Stormie are gone, is my removal from this dizzying view of sea.

Uncle Hedley is still packing up books and furniture which will be removed directly to Southampton; he will then follow with the boys. Jane Hedley, Arabel – even their lovely little daughter Ibbit – are gone there. It is on account of the dampness occasioned by the wet mud of the river that I am afraid to travel to that part of coastal country. Papa has written to Bro requesting he advise Dr. Barry that my chair outings do not run on two consecutive days, on account of how tired I am becoming since Sam and Stormie left. I will write to assure Papa that at present in Torquay I am taken care of as if I were made of Venetian glass.

Bro looks decidedly more shaggy with his long veil of hair. He has spent the best part of the summer painting water-colours, fishing, smoking.

An arch of light hangs yellow over the horizon. The chilled fingers of a summer sea breeze reach through cracked window-frames.

Henrietta sits and sews. A fine silver needle threads memories. Memories of Sam and Stormie etched on my mind stipple my skin with pin-pricks. Sharp pains spread through my abdomen. I slide beneath the covers. Drugged by weariness, I struggle to keep my eyes open, and feel myself falling into a pit, clawing at collapsing walls. Through the sheets I pick out a faint figure. She signals to me. A scream stabs inside my head, frightening me back to the bleak reality of being closed in, irrevocably, and of the suffocating loneliness living inside whether Henrietta, Bro, Papa, or the weird creature beside the window are with me, or after they are gone.

And feelings from memories swell in waves through my body down to my legs. Memories held in mist like the sea is early each morning in summer.

A deathly stillness encases the room. Silence pierces my ears. A great booming silence. The woman appears in the armchair, unearthly, not inhuman. A man moves towards me; he is the gentleman I saw once before. His touch ghosts across my hand. And when I sit up and lean back, thumping my head on the bedstead, causing a taste steely and bloody to seep into my mouth, they both withdraw.

To the east a medley of clouds play. I cannot see them now and yet feel them all around. The man holds me, his legs entwined with mine, his arms tangled about me.

A dazzle of sunlight breaks through the mottled marbled sea of grey-blue. The rays light up neglected anger within.

This morning Bro said he has written to Papa for my move to Southampton to be cancelled.
That
settles
that
. He also said a Presbyterian minister on the island of Jamaica definitely wrote to Papa shortly before Sam's removal to England. Not only was Sam paying his ex-slaves a miserable pittance of a wage, but, worse, Sam had a Creole mistress and was himself in grave moral danger.

For a while words were strangled in my throat. ‘If Sam
was
recalled to England by Papa,' I eventually said, ‘why did Papa only allow him to stay here but once, paying us such a brief visit? Barely a full ten days. Given more time, we might have offered Sam the guidance and advice I now so deeply feel he needs.'

Bro covered his face with his hands, a prayer stumbled from his lips; Amens. A pause. He disappeared downstairs.

Why has Crow not brought my evening opium dose? Baleful pools of light from the burnished glass of a flickering bedside lamp float across my hands. Has Crow slipped in to turn up the flame? I am staring into its deep yellow heart. Crow should have drawn the curtains by now.

It is late. Outside the darkness scares me so. My fear is sealed in a black satin sky; the ever-changing black or blue of sea, to the grey-white shimmer of dawn. A dawn of discontent; of wandering through ruins. What will rise from them?

Look how the fire has died. I must ring for Crow.

. . . The worst grief of all (a very heavy grief at first – until I learned to be wise & submissive about it) has been the departure for the West Indies of two of my dear brothers, who went from London without a last word or look from me. It was all
kindly
done – and I am reconciled – but I can't write of it now . . .

‘Delightful!' Bro exclaimed after reading my final draft of ‘The Legend of the Brown Rosary', though he finds it melancholy and fears, as I do, that the ballad may be too long for
Finden
. It is soon to be despatched, accompained by an apology on account of the length.

Again I have written to Papa and demanded that Bro stay. Am I being selfish? Am I trying to feather-line my life and cushion myself from past griefs at my brother's expense? The days spent together in our Hope End drawing-room were heavenly. Sam enchanted us all with his gadding tongue, black silk stocks and
couleur de rose
garters. Such wit! Such a dandy! So amiable in every way. Sam's is one of the faces, one most loved face, that never ceases to be present with me in this room. It was he who first told me that Hope End was advertised, and with a full description, in
The Sun
. The sound of prospective buyers' footsteps brought terror to our hearts. Bro, Sam, Henrietta and I clung for comfort to the legs of chairs like silent cold clingy bats unable to flutter our black wings. All those horrible sounds . . .
the noise of hammering and men walking up and down stairs, from morning to night
. Five cart-loads of packing-cases went to the warehouse – the timber for the packing-cases alone cost one hundred pounds. It was clear we were leaving. Papa found it more difficult to accept than the rest of us. On a practical level all the arrangements had been made but mentally Papa seemed to be dodging the move. He spent our final evening playing cricket on the lawn with Bro and Sam. Smiling externally but his eyes couldn't mask the blinding pain held within.

. . . My difficulty in regard to sleep, ordinarily, is from a want of calmness in the nervous system & circulation – therefore it stands to reason that whatever is of a disturbing character to body or mind, must increase the difficulty a little. But
use
will remove the obstacle (i.e. the irritation from moving) and in the process of doing this, my dearest papa's wishes shall be attended to. There has been a week's rest in consequence of the weather, for me, so that I ought to be fit for sailing round the world by today; and I expect Dr. Barry every moment to come & say so. He does not
coerce
, as it used to be his gracious pleasure to do once – and indeed Crow observed to me yesterday, ‘I am sure, ma'am, you are a much greater favourite of Dr. Barry's than you used to be.' ‘How do you mean, Crow?' ‘Why, I observe that he does not seem to like to press you to do anything disagreeable to you. He gives up in a minute when he sees that you don't like what he proposes – he seems so much more good-natured altogether.' He is very kind, & I have nothing to complain of – & certainly if he does (as he does) treat me like a child, it is now like a very good child indeed – ‘it
shall
have its sugar plum!
that
it shall!' – and not like a naughty perverse child that looks best with its face in the corner . . .