The Lamplighter, стр. 6
No matter how many years,
The story just kept coming in and coming back
Like the sea to the shore
Like the sea always comes back to the shore.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Nobody told my story before.
You better listen good, girl.
Or I’m going to tell it twice!
MARY:
I wanted to be still and quiet.
Never to tell it.
When I lived it
sun up to sun set.
BLACK HARRIOT:
I was bought up on the Guinea Coast
CONSTANCE:
Imagine how much gold they took
To name a Coast after it.
MARY:
Imagine how much ivory
CONSTANCE:
To call a Coast Ivory Coast.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Imagine how many slaves
MARY:
To name a Coast Slave Coast?
CONSTANCE:
On the front of the 22-carat gold Guinea
There is an elephant and a castle,
Beneath the effigy of a right-facing King.
MACBEAN:
‘Elephant and Castle’ – very popular name for British pubs.
BLACK HARRIOT:
I was brought up on the Guinea Coast
When I was a young girl.
I was taken to St Kitts and sold
To Big Fat Planter
When I was a young girl.
I had two children
Their father was Big Fat Planter
When I was a young girl.
FX:
(Urban landscape. Suggested rather than stated.)
BLACK HARRIOT:
He brought us to England
When I was a young woman
Where he died of the smallpox
And left us all penniless
When I was a young woman.
Nothing else to do to stay alive
MARY:
When I was a young woman
BLACK HARRIOT:
I learnt to be a whore and I taught myself to read. I imagined a polite whore would fare better in the streets of London. Seventy of my regulars were Members of the House of Lords.
MARY:
When I was a young woman
CONSTANCE:
Lord, Lady, Sir, Master, Misses, Miss,
Yes, No. Yes Miss, No Miss. Yes Sir, No Sir.
Three bags full sir.
Young Missy-Missy said I must always
Answer yes or no if asked a question. I asked her what must I say if it is something I do not know. She answered why you must say you do not know of course.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Bien sur!
CONSTANCE:
Of course!
FX:
(Cane field.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
After the savage ship
There were the savage fields
MARY:
I was a field hand.
We made the fields; before us there were no fields;
We hacked back at the frontier wilderness,
Clinging to the edge
Of the wild frontier,
Slowly, painfully, pushing
Forward
And back.
We did the digging and the planting,
The cutting and the burning,
The carrying and the loading.
LAMPLIGHTER:
With hoes and knives and axes,
We sliced and stripped methodically,
Pushing back the line of cane,
We sweated and dripped continually.
MARY:
I worked in the Third Gang first,
Before the Second and then the first.
My work was heavy –
With the other women
I moved my hoes quick, quick and in time,
Singing to stop me dying in the sugar cane.
I could hear the sugarbirds whistling
In the sugar cane.
MUSIC:
(Sugar cane music.)
MARY:
From sun up to sun down
From four in the morning
Up with the conch shell
CONSTANCE:
Stripping it down, cutting it down.
Weeping sugar cane. Crying sugar cane.
MARY:
The sun told the time.
I was a field hand a long time
Third Gang, Second Gang, First
I worked the sugar cane.
My body never grew a child.
I was barren.
The child I might have had
Shrivelled up and died inside,
All the sugar sucked out of it.
I worked from when I was a girl
Till my old age.
Till my hands were wrinkled
Till my fingers looked like bindweed,
Knarled and crossed over themselves,
Like the roots of old trees.
I was a field hand all my days.
CONSTANCE:
I was a hand in the house
BLACK HARRIOT:
I was a hand in the street
LAMPLIGHTER:
I was a kitchen hand
BLACK HARRIOT:
My children, the BigHouseMan’s children
Became servants to their brothers
And sisters. Their father
took us wherever he found us
MARY:
In the fields
BLACK HARRIOT:
In the house
CONSTANCE:
In the outhouse
MARY:
In his bedroom, kitchen. He noted it down in Latin. Every one of us he took, he wrote it in an old book.
CONSTANCE:
Tup – twice. Sup lect – on the bed; Sup Terr – On the ground. In Silva – in the woods. In Mag or in Parv – in great or small house. Illa habet menses – she has her period.
MACBEAN:
A slave was catched by Port Royal eating canes. Gave him a moderate whipping, pickled him well, made Hector shit in his mouth, immediately put a gag on whilst his mouth was full and made him wear it for five or six hours.
MARY:
He came for me night after night
Morning after morning.
Each time he left
He took a piece of me away.
I would be as silent as the moon.
One night when the moon was hidden
Behind the cloud, I hit him.
I hit him and hit him again.
Across the back of the head,
Hard as I could.
And as I did it I let out a roar.
It was not a scream. It was not a cry.
MACBEAN:
Slave Code: Under British law, if any slave resist his master, or owner, or other person, by his or her order, correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony; but the master, owner, and every such other person so giving correction, shall be free and acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such accident had never happened.
MARY:
He had me flogged then tied to the cherry tree and left for dead
I was left swinging for three days
To be seen, to break the spirit
Of anyone whose spirit might
Need breaking,
And after three days, I was cut down,
Expected to be dead. I was alive, just.
Still slightly breathing.
I was so beaten and whipped
That my face, back, hands were scarred.
I was ugly, knarled, twisted.
When I found myself alive
I knew I had been born again
And that the Lord Christ himself
Had come to give me salvation.
CONSTANCE:
Rise, let us be going; behold he is at hand that doth betray me. Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.
ALL:
Amen!
CONSTANCE:
One teardrop, two, three teardrops, four, five teardrops, six, seven teardrops, more, eight, nine, ten. Nine maidens crying, eight, seven maidens sleeping, late, six maidens dying, five maidens weeping, four maidens leaping, three, two, one, nought, nothing. No. Stop. Stop. Stop.
LAMPLIGHTER:
I rose before dawn in that house and went to bed long after dusk.
I never knew a day off. The House Lady tried to teach me the precepts of God’s word. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
But I was her slave.
I suppose she never saw me as