Redlegs by Chris Dolan

Author:Chris Dolan [Chris Dolan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908251091
Publisher: Vagabond Voices
Published: 2012-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

In the year of the women’s arrival, the estate had had barely fifteen black labourers serving out their indenture, and only a handful of permanent whites. By 1838, the presence of new, young, European blood, together with the spreading fame of Captain Shaw’s methods and philosophies, was attracting men from plantations across the island. But still, experienced cutters and craftsmen were too easily tempted to move on whenever they saw a better opportunity.

At harvest and sowing – three of each a year on the Coak Estate – every uncultivated piece of land was taken up by makeshift houses. In the intervening months the land was emptied again. Shacks were easily dismantled and carried on the back to other plantations. Since emancipation, islanders had become like turtles, moving slowly under the weight of their shells, from pasture to pasture. If Coak’s dream of a great factory and Shaw’s of a flourishing, settled community were ever to be realised, it was essential that they provide year-round work and put down stronger roots, deeper foundations, for their people.

Elspeth played her part by overseeing the enhancing and improving of the old slave houses. She and her women set to work on cleaning up the stonework, clearing the weeds, putting down stone flooring and installing furniture. Shaw allowed the experiment to go ahead on the understanding that this was an investment the women themselves were making to the estate, and any expenses incurred were to be met by them. They had no actual money, naturally, but there was a notional wage rate, and owings were noted down in a book to be repaid at a later date, once their increasingly extended indenture had been served. No one was permitted to seek work elsewhere while indebted to Lord Coak.

Even those men who had found a partner were tempted away by work elsewhere. Already, after four years, some who had fathered children cared little about leaving them and their mothers behind, making faint promises of return. Diana continued to insist that not being bound by a God-fearing marriage ceremony made this behaviour only too easy. Shaw, though not a man of religious orthodoxy, eventually concurred. The only option was to bring a minister up from Bridgetown – a journey few clerics were anxious to make, and fewer still were acceptable to the factor.

Reverend Galloway attempted to make the journey in a polished gig, but the roads were in such a dire state that it gave up the ghost at Blackman’s Gully, obliging the minister to continue on foot, arriving short-tempered and outraged. “This estate,” he proclaimed the minute he set foot inside the gates, “has fallen by the wayside.” He told them that terrible things were heard in town of the morality – or lack of it – in this outpost. “We hear of concubinage, fornication, illegitimacy, and an aversion to hearing the word of God spoken.”

“We are so far from town, Minister, and have so much work to do,” confessed Diana.

“Nothing should inhibit a good Christian

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