The Apple (5 page)

Familiar lights were glowing in the distance. Night had descended entirely, and the temperature in the cabin had become chilly. Clara became aware that her hands were still bare. She fetched her gloves out of the pocket of her dress, taking great care not to jingle the coins in there. But in attempting to put her right glove on, she discovered that the nail of her middle finger was impeding progress more than usual: it was jagged, shaped like the edge of a specialised cutting-tool. She must have gripped the rim of the rat pit harder than she remembered.

An unexpected voice – her own – piped up in the dark.

‘My nail is broken, sir. But it’s still quite long. And very sharp. Do you want to feel it, sir?’

She put her hand into the murky space between them and he took it. She dug her fingernail into his palm, to demonstrate its potentials.

‘Shall I, sir?’

He wrapped her finger in his hand, holding it gently.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Chocolate Hearts from the New World

I
n the professional judgement of Dr James Curlew, his unfortunate daughter had, at the very most, five years left before it was all over. Not her life, you understand; her prospects for marriage. The same physical features that made him such a distinguished-looking man – tall, rangy build, aquiline nose, long face, strong jaw – were a calamitous inheritance for a girl. If she acted quickly, now while she was in her teens, there was still hope.

‘Oh, but I don’t wish to marry, Father,’ she told him. ‘The world has enough married folk in it. What it hasn’t got enough of is missionaries.’

‘In that case,’ he joked, ‘it’s damn naughty of the savages in Africa to keep eating them, isn’t it?’

‘You mustn’t call them savages, Father,’ Emmeline chided him solemnly. ‘Such disparagements are precisely why slavery is still with us.’

Dr Curlew clenched his jaw – the same jaw he’d passed on to his blameless daughter – and did his best not to argue. Rancour between him and Emmeline would have grieved his wife, had she lived to see it.

‘I don’t know why you say “still with us”,’ he couldn’t help remarking. ‘We don’t have slavery in England.’

‘We must regard the whole world as our home, Father,’ said Emmeline, wiping her fingers on the breakfast napkin. Pale sunlight was shining through the parlour window onto her face and upper body, a cool glow aided by the white tablecloth and the snowy landscape outside. The jingling of horses’ harnesses as the nearby shops received their deliveries mingled with the tinkling of Emmeline’s spoon in her teacup. ‘This is the 1850s,’ she reminded her father, as if the modern age had arrived while he’d been occupied elsewhere. ‘Every place on Earth is connected by the web of our Empire. I have correspondents as far-flung as Kabool and New York.’

‘Oh?’ This was promising. Without taking his eyes off his daughter, he rang the bell for the housemaid, as the room wasn’t as warm as it should be. ‘Might some of these correspondents be of the male sex?’

‘Oh, the majority of them, Father,’ grinned Emmeline. ‘Males are in far more desperate need of salvation than females, I’ve found.’

She was quite winsome when she smiled. Her lips still had something of the childish rosebud about them, and there were dimples in her cheeks. Her eyes were bright, her face unlined, her hair glossy. Five years, at most, she would retain these qualities, then the sap would begin to drain out of her, and she would be left only with the aquiline nose and the Curlew jaw. Moreover, arithmetic would be against her; she would strike any potential suitors as unfeasibly old. Dear little Emmeline could prattle all she liked about modern Society and how unrecognisably different it was from when he was a young man, but some attitudes were eternal.

The maidservant padded into the room and, without needing to be told, perceived at once what the trouble was. She got on her knees in front of the hearth and started coaxing the flames. Worth her weight in gold, that girl.

Once Emmeline had declared that she was writing to many mysterious gentlemen all over the world, her father was naturally curious to know if this were true, and, if so, who these mysterious gentlemen might be. Emmeline was clearly not going to tell him, so he had a word with Gertie who, in addition to her other duties, also had the task of walking to the pillarbox to post Miss Curlew’s letters.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the servant. ‘Never less than one a day. Sometimes five or six.’

‘Always to the same person?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Replies?’

‘Sometimes, sir.’

‘From … from what part of the world, usually?’

‘America, sir.’

‘How tantalising.’

‘Yes, sir.’

In point of fact, most of the letters that Emmeline sent went unanswered. She tried to write at least half a dozen each afternoon, but sometimes her wrist grew weak or she got the urge to go out walking. It really would be a great boon to mankind (and womankind!) if someone could invent a mechanism for making automatic copies of a page of text. All this fuss in the newspapers recently about Mr Sobrero inventing nitro-glycerine! What did the world need another method of destruction for, when there were all sorts of useful things yet to be invented? However, she would scribble on regardless. There was a war to be fought – her own just and gentle war. The war against slavery.

The gentlemen to whom she wrote were mainly located in Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, the Virginias and the Carolinas. Modifying a generic text with a sprinkling of local details gleaned from imported newspapers and journals, she would address each man as well-informedly as she could, imploring him to renounce slave-owning and allow his hard heart to be penetrated by the love of Christ. She quoted passages of Scripture. She quoted Charles Dickens’s
American Notes
. She hinted that if the recipient should be inspired to recant his sinful behaviour and set his slaves free, there would, in this world, exist at least one person – Miss Emmeline Curlew – who would venerate him as a hero. Moral courage, she argued, is the manliest of virtues, and few men possess it.

Most of these letters vanished into a void. A small proportion provoked replies, slim envelopes arriving weeks and months afterwards, single sheets suffused with varying strengths of nasty temper.

I will thank you to keep your ignorant and impudent
babblings to yourself
, said one.

Has it occurred to you, Miss
, said another,
that the
very clothes you are wearing as you pen your imperious missive
may have their origins in my cotton fields?

Our postal system
, averred another,
is superior to
yours, but it may not long remain so if it is burdened with
unsolicited and mischievous piffle
.

Some respondents went to greater effort, quoting passages from the Bible apparently condoning slavery, and wishing Miss Curlew a measure of wisdom and tolerance of other folks’ customs as she grew older. One man in Port Hudson said that if she spent half an hour in the company of the niggers she spoke of so glowingly, the brutes would make her wish she’d never been born, and then most likely murder her. She even received one letter from a plantation-owner’s wife, threatening her with hellfire, hired assassins and savage dogs if ‘you damned English hussy’ dared to write to her husband again.

May our Lord forgive you
, Emmeline wrote back,
for
your unkind and, if I may say so, blasphemous words
…

One day, a most unusual item of mail was delivered. The bulk of the Curlews’ correspondence arrived at their house either in the first post, early in the morning, or in the last post, at evening. This item arrived at midday, while Emmeline and her father were being served luncheon. It was a handsomely wrapped box, on which the sender had affixed slightly insufficient postage. Dr Curlew had to pay the postman ninepence, and his brow was wrinkled as he carried the parcel into the parlour. He wasn’t acquainted with anyone in Chickamauga, Georgia.

‘It’s for you,’ he said, handing it over to his daughter.

Emmeline laid the parcel in the lap of her skirts, and returned her attention to the cold galantine on her plate. She carved off another slice and conveyed it to her mouth, her big jaw swinging down as she did so.

‘Aren’t you curious to see what it is?’ said Dr Curlew.

The girl chewed, swallowed. ‘Of course I’m curious.’

‘So am I. Would it be very presumptuous if I asked you to open it now?’

‘Yes, it would, Father,’ smiled Emmeline, ‘but I forgive you.’ And she fetched the package up onto the table and tore its layers of brown paper off. Inside were a letter, a photograph and a box of chocolates. The letter and photograph Emmeline laid unexamined behind the teapot. The chocolates she opened for her father’s inspection.

‘Very fancy,’ he commented, extracting, from under the powdered paper cups of dark, luxurious-smelling confectionery, a slip of paper detailing the varieties. The slip of paper itself was impregnated with a delicious aroma, and he sniffed it briefly before studying what it had to say. Terms like ‘delectable’, ‘exotic’, ‘rich’ and ‘luscious’ recurred throughout.

‘Who is this gentleman?’ enquired Dr Curlew, laying the paper over the glittering assortment of pralines and caramels.

Emmeline fetched up the letter and frowned at the signature.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I have so many. I must have read about him in an article somewhere.’

‘The photograph – is it of him?’

Emmeline picked up the thick rectangle of card.

‘I presume so. I can’t recall ever seeing this face before.’ After a moment’s hesitation she handed the photograph to her father. He studied it just as he had studied the fragrant slip of paper.

‘Presentable-looking chap,’ he conceded. ‘Upright carriage, broad shoulders. Firm jaw. Healthy, I expect. His trousers could use a press. But not a bad specimen.’ Dr Curlew was keeping his tone as calm and offhand as he could, but in truth he was already picturing the offspring of this union. A grandson, maybe even two. Fine, robust boys, calling him grandpa in barbarous accents.

‘A remarkably … amiable gesture on his part, sending you these chocolates,’ he observed.

Emmeline gestured across the table. Her hand was, as always, somewhat ink-stained. ‘Do have one, Father.’

‘Thank you, I will.’ And he popped a hazelnut-encrusted globe into his mouth, allowing it to melt against his palate while his daughter read the letter in silence.

Dear Miss Curlew
,

Thank you for your letter. May I say that you
have the most elegant handwriting? Quite a change
from that produced by any of the ladies here. Your
signature especially caused me to linger over it,
admiring its combination of simplicity, confidence &
grace. Less refined females imagine that a paroxism of
calligraphic flourishes consigns elegance upon them. It
takes a signature such as yours to make clear the gulf
between the genuine article & its imitations
.
However, you will be growing impatient with these
flatteries (however sincerely meant). You wish to know
what I thought of your advice to me. You hope, perhaps,
for news that I have freed my slaves & dedicated
myself to Christ. On the latter matter I can
reassure you; I love our Lord as much as any decent,
imperfect man can. The passages you quoted from the
Good Book are of course well known to me, as are
other passages which take a different position
.

As far as my slaves are concerned, they are free
already. That is, I give them as much freedom as good
sense allows, & care for them as conscientously as I
would my own children (of whom, sadly, I have none).
My slaves are contented and healthy; their duties are
not onerous. The climate in Georgia is rather more
salubrious than you may be accustomed to in England,
and the crops grow with little fuss, ripening in the
glorious sun that God has seen fit to shine over my
modest domain. As I pen these words, Perry, one of
my field hands, is playing with Shakespeare, my dog.
He does this not because he is obliged to but because
he likes Shakespeare and, if you will forgive me
boasting, is fond of his master too. In fact, if slavery
should ever be abolished – as I fear it will be, if the
strident voices in our own Northern states exchange
their shouting for bellicose action – I am worried for
my poor Perry. He is a trusting & gentle creature,
and if he is forced to make his own way in this cruel
world, without so much as a roof over his head, I
suspect he will suffer a dismal fate
.

I do not expect that these few words will convince
you of the rightness of my way of life. I regret that
you cannot visit my home & make your own judgements.
I can only hope that if you were, by some miracle,
to arrive as my esteemed guest, you would find
this place to be a happy & pleasant one, lacking only
the charm that a mistress might have provided, had not
my fiancée been taken from me in tragic circumstances
.

I can assure you that, far from being the hotbed
of savagery and squalor that you may imagine, Georgia
is really quite a civilised place. It even has a chocolate
shop, as you have no doubt already divined. I offer you
these sweet trifles as a token of my gratitude for your
interest in my soul. A poor gift, I know; some might
say an impertinent one. But since you already possess a
Bible, the most precious gift any of us can own, it is
difficult to imagine what else you might possibly need.
Chocolates can, at least, give pleasure, & if you don’t
eat them, you can always give them to your parents
.