The Lamplighter, стр. 9
BLACK HARRIOT:
My story is the story of sugar.
I was stolen for sugar.
I gave my body up for sugar.
I nearly died for sugar.
Sugar is my family tree.
I have no sugar daddy.
CONSTANCE:
They took my little girl
when she was three years old
already old enough to be my soul
mate, to shadow me in the sun
all day and ask a hundred whys.
I never told her lies.
I never talk about her.
They took her and they sold her.
One, two.
MACBEAN:
A three-year-old girl is to be sold
Betwixt the hours of six and eight
In Bristol coffee house, sturdy, healthy, has had the small pox,
for five shillings.
CONSTANCE:
I remember when she was in my belly
counting the months
– one two three –
and trying to imagine her
and trying to think how
if she were a girl
– four five six –
I could make her look ugly
enough when she got older
– nine ten eleven –
so that none of them ever came near her
on the day they sold her,
my body shook and shook so much
that my speech went.
For months, I couldn’t say a word.
How many moons ago
how many years
– twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen –
since I seen my four children?
My baby boy, my wise girl
with the big questions, my big boy
whose eyes changed the time
he saw me being beaten?
How many moons since I saw my children?
MACBEAN:
The rule of thumb on the sugar plantations:
One slave required for every acre of land.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Jamaica produced nearly a quarter of the world’s sugar.
MARY:
Back in the big house,
The BigMan entertained his friends.
MACBEAN:
Wednesday, 15 March 1775. John Cope, Richard Vassall, William Blake Esqr dined with me and stayed till nine in the evening. Mr Cope stayed all night. Had mutton broth, roast mutton and broccoli, carrots and asparagus, stewed mudfish, roast goose and paw paw, apple sauce, stewed giblets, some fine lettuce which Mr Vassall brought me, crabs, cheese, mush melon. Punch, porter, ale, cider, Madeira wine and brandy.
LAMPLIGHTER:
I was his cook for many years.
If I ever made a mistake,
If they ever thought I could have done something better.
Nobody said anything to me. I was stripped directly and they cut away at me.
I was whipped so many times,
My back was all corruption, as if it would rot. After the lashes
They’d wash my back with salt water,
Rub it with rags, and then send me straight back to work again in the kitchen.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Syllabubs and fancys, junkets and ices, milk puddings, suet puddings.
MUSIC:
(Sugar cane music, the next part is sung.)
SONG:
(Spiritual.)
ALL:
Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land
Tell old Pharoah, Let my people go.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Go down Moses
MARY:
way down Egypt’s land
CONSTANCE:
Tell old Pharoah,
ALL:
Let my people go.
LAMPLIGHTER:
I stood on the cobbled quay,
And was resold to the Plantations.
I left Avonmouth
And crossed the Atlantic.
This is my story.
MARY:
Narrated by herself.
LAMPLIGHTER:
I was shy of my story for years.
I did the thing that you are taught to do.
ALL:
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
CONSTANCE + ALL:
Keep it quiet. Button it. Bite your lip. Bite your tongue. Pipe down. Cut the cackle. Stow it. Mum’s the word. Whist! Hush. Hold your tongue! Keep your mouth shut! Shut it. Keep schtum!
MARY (softly):
Hush now. Don’t explain. There, there. Hush now.
LAMPLIGHTER (sings):
Hush little baby, don’t you cry,
Mama’s going to sing you a lullaby.
CONSTANCE:
The field driver comes for me early. He is coming for me because he is coming for her. She won’t go anywhere without me. She is Only three. She is a girl who says things that always surprise. The other day she ask me if she will be a man or a woman when she grow up?
It is already hot. Her hand sticks to me like we are joined together. I squeeze her hand. I always tell her that is me passing my love to her – our special hand squeeze. She squeezes back. It is her reply. She loves that. How the love happens without words.
I know, as I walk up the hill, along the side of the sugar cane past the orchard, towards the Big House; I know, as I look down to the ground, wanting for the ground to open up and swallow us both up; I know, as I walk with her little hand in mine, that I will never forget the feel of it, slightly sticky, warm, small fingers. There is nothing like the feeling of a small child’s hand in yours. You are the guide. It is full of faith, light, trusting. Sometimes, she likes to close her eyes and for me to lead her. Sometimes she likes me to tell her life by reading the darker lines on her hand, the lifelines. I tell her she will grow into an old woman; she has a strong heart. She will have five children. I like to count my child’s children.
One, two, three, four, five.
(As if she is hiding in numbers.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
Hush sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Scene 9: Shipping News
MACBEAN:
Across the green sea of darkness sailed
CONSTANCE:
The Brookes, the Vigilant, the Iphigenia.
MACBEAN:
Galeforce ten. Rough or High.
120 slaves sailed on the Royal Charlotte
– fifty died.
105 slaves sailed on the Molly
– fifty died.
MUSIC:
(A death roll.)
MACBEAN:
6th September 1781, the Zong was on its
Well-tried route from Liverpool, to
West Africa, and on to the Caribbean.
Ship’s Captain, Luke Collingwood,
Decided to jettison live slaves into
The sea, so that he could claim
Insurance on each life.
CONSTANCE:
£30 per dead slave.
MACBEAN:
29 November, the first batch –
54 slaves thrown overboard alive.
A day later 42 living slaves
Thrown to the sharks.
On the third day,
26 more slaves thrown to sea.
On the third day,
The slaves put up a fight, and were
Shackled before they were drowned
In the early, unmarked, grave of the sea.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Ten people saw what was happening
And refused to hang around waiting.
They jumped, up high,
They dived down into the sea.
Those were the deaths with wings,
Like songs, like freedom songs,
Rising up and out at last.
No more no more, no more, no more.
MACBEAN:
Across the roaring Atlantic tossed
The steel-stowed, stocked slave-ships
BLACK HARRIOT:
Tobacco for the pipes of Englishmen.
Coffee for fashionable society.
Sugar for the English poor.
Scene 10: Death – free at last
FX:
(Cane field.)
MARY:
Clarissa was Congolese, was thirteen
By a guess,
She was ill when she arrived and they
Put her to work