Archibald Jamieson, after a day copying screeds of legal argument about a boundary dispute between two Angus farmers, was taking advantage of the late evening light to finish reading the Wedderburn journal. He was not quite certain why he was bothering. Sandy Wedderburn’s jottings were such a mix of feebleness, spite and delusion, quite apart from being badly written and poorly spelt – an offence to his clerical sensibilities – that Jamieson found it hard to persuade himself there was anything useful to be got out of them. Still, he read on.
He kept wondering about Susan, whether she had read these pages through tears of rage or between fits of vomiting. The fact that she had sent the journal to him suggested that she had not – could not – confront her father with it. This still left an unanswered question: what did she expect Archie Jamieson to do with it?
She seemed to have been right about one thing: Sandy had painted Joseph Knight into that picture above the fireplace. So who had painted him out? Would Sir John really have done that, or had it done, and still left the thing hanging so prominently? He hadn’t even appeared to like it, had been dismissive of ‘the artist’ – ‘one had to settle for what one could get out there’. Hardly the affectionate tone a man might be expected to use of his dead brother’s memory.
Perhaps, though, Sandy’s journal had supplied Sir John’s motivation for keeping it on display: you will look out from that picture for a hundred years and never age a day. For a wealthy, settled, successful family, the Wedderburns seemed beset with insecurities.
Saturday 1st January 1763. Glen Isla. This New Yr’s night is moderate compard wt last. The brothers kept well up wt drink & cards & a cluster of companyons but I slipt away shortly after midnight. I have found a new companyon of my own. It is – a poem!
I found it among Johns books. It is The Grave. A somber piece by a Edinburgh minister Robert Blair whos task is to ‘paint the gloomy horrors of the Tomb’. If his soul was black beekd, as John put it, I no not but his poem is dark. He died the yr our father died it says. It is befor me now. Copying from it is an efort and it makes me see how adrift is my spelling. But that is its mildest lesson. In every line of it are hints of Papa & us & them (the negers) & what must come to us all:
What is this world?
What but a spacious burial-field unwall’d,
Strew’d with death’s spoils, the spoils of animals,
Savage and tame, and full of dead men’s bones?
There is truth in it & in this:
’Tis here all meet!
The shivering Icelander, and sun-burnt Moor;
Men of all climes, that never met before …
Here the o’erloaded slave flings down his burden
From his gall’d shoulders, and when the cruel tyrant,
With all his guards and tools of power about him,
Is meditating new unheard-of hardships,
Mocks his short arm, and quick as thought escapes
Where tyrants vex not, and the weary rest.
That is fearsome in its nearness. You wd think the man had bene here. It is a strange comfort tho, a cold littel passion, this book. The others wd hate it. Has J. ever read it? I can not think he has. The pages seem unturnd, tho the damp has made them moldy.
Tuesday 11th January. Mary colapsd in the fields. The party she was wt was bairns & old haggs. By chance I was observing them from curiossity not because they need supervising they were only gathring grass for the cattel. She saw me at a distance & straitened her self looking at me. Then she gave a cry & fell to the ground. 2 of the old use-less wimen went to aid her. I wd have driven them off as I beleved it too much coinsidence she shd fall in front of me, & that she was faining, til she went into great twistings & I cd not dout her pain. Then from between her legs suddenly thare bloomd a great stane of blood on the ground & she was deliverd of an abortion. Newman who is in the first gang did not now of it at first. Joseph was with the 3d gang as he often is when bored wt the house, he strips off his finery & defies Johns plans for him. He ran to fech Newman. Nothing but chanes wd have kept that neger at his labour he hurried to her & gathering her up he caried her to ther hut. His passion was such that none of us dared prevent him nor did we make him returne to his work this day. She lies very sick. John wd have sent for James but Newman swoar he wd not let him touch her & got the old wimen to tend her. J. says he will let it pass but if she shold die he will have Newman punished for his obstinasy.
Wednesday 12th January. I can not but help think some how it is my falt. This is foolish I know & certanly the fetus was not mine but had I not put her to the feelds it might not have happened.
Friday 14th January. She is dead. God forgive me.
Saturday 15th January. Newman gone. I would go too if I could.
Sunday 16th January.
Here too the petty tyrant …
Who fix’d his iron talons on the poor,
And gripp’d them like some lordly beast of prey,
Deaf to the forceful cries of gnawing hunger,
And piteous plaintive voice of misery
(as if a slave was not a shred of nature,
Of the same common nature with his lord),
Now tame and humble, like a child that’s whipp’d,
Shakes hands with dust, and calls the worms his kinsman …
Tuesday 18th January. John says if he is not back to morrow he must send to the maroons to track him which they will do for a sum. He says he must be sene to hunt him or they will all run off.
Friday 21st January. The maroons think he has gone to the mountains whare he will perrish if they do not find him first or if he does not come to ther town. Which ever of these they say they will return him here.
Sunday 30th January. John plans to leave for Scotland no later than the start of May. With good wether we may make Liverpool or Greenock in 7 wks. He will have power of atturny for Peter & James (& me tho I will be there also God willing) to settle what family business he can. That is 5 months & we shall see home mother sisters, all.
Tuesday 1st February. Newman is found. The maroons broght him in this morning on the back of a pony. Where ever he went when he left Glen Isla, he came back & hangd him self in the woods a mile fr the house. I went with one of them he showd me the spot, a dark shady place wt very tall trees. He had climbd one attachd the rope to a branch & dropt from it. It was hard to reach him & cut him down the neger told me. Stood a while till the moskitoes drove us away.
It is strange to think that he died twice, once as Charlie once as Newman. In deed he may have died once at leest even before then in Africa. Perhaps that is all slave lives are, a number of deaths. Perhaps all life is only a number of deaths.
Self-murder is a grevous sin yet I can not sensure him for it. Blair says to take your own life is like rushing into the presence of the Judge daring him to do his worst – ‘Unheard-of tortures must be reservd for such’. Yet Newman had sufferd much already you think he cd thole what ever the Supreme Being in his infinit wisdom dispensd. Is this blasphemmy? I care not. I do not even no if negers are broght befor God to be judgd, or if that is a fate reservd only for us ther masters. But then what weght of sin will be on our backs.
Thursday 17th February. This day I askd John if he means to purchase land & house when we are at home. He says he intends to look. Blackness is gone from us & tho we have the properties in Dundee he wants to be a laird with cattel game &c. some where not far from where we grew up. There is no question of him not coming back here. He knows my feelings on this subject but says he must be in Jamaica 5 or 10 yrs more. If 10 he wd still be only in his middle forties. Plenty of time he asures me to marry rase children become a Scotsman again. Are you not a Scotsman here? I askd. Are you? he replied. Is James? We are none of us. We are but sojorners here. If you go to seek gold you take it away and bild a palace you do not bide in the hole where you find it. He is right of coarse. But for me if once I reach Scotland I will not take my foot from it again.
Friday 18th February. Joseph like a specter these days – silent here a moment gone the next. He performes his duties around the house and garden well but with out the least sign of interest. He is bereft of Rosana of Mary of Newman maybe this is the cause. What does he mind of Africa his own people his mother? Does he have emotion or passion? He does not show it.
Tuesday 8th March. I do not sleep much these nts. The dreams are back. Hanging men burning men. Yet phisickly I am as well as I have been in a twelfmonth.
Tuesday 12th April. A ship the Mary is at Savanna loading with sugar & other goods and sails for Cork Dublin & Greenock by the month end. John has ritten to sicure us places abord her. The name does not escape me nor Peter who remarkd that I wd once more have a berth in Mary which I was obligd to take in good spirits tho I did not feel it. So they know too! Of course they hv alwayes known. There are no secrets here. You can not shit in the privvy but some neger goes past & wishes you good morning.
John now twice as active as ever compleeting busines, seeing frends & redding the estate agaynst all dificulties over the next yr but he insists I rest easy so as to be well for the jurney, the others say the same. But I am well! They wish to be rid of me. I will thole that as I wish to be rid of Jamaica.
Thursday 19th May. God mocks me for mocking Him. This entry is a desparate sadnes. After all my hopes of last month – of the last year! – John is gone wtout me. He cd not delay, the Mary wd not since the winds were faverable. The curst dog came back & worrid me sore not a day after I last wrote & has left me like a rag. I cd not move from my bed til this week. They talkd of getting me aboard but the pasage to Scotland wd surely have killd me even if the jurney to Sav had not. I tried to make my self believe I cd manage it. I stood from the bed one time to pruve it & fell on my face after 2 steps.
James came & ministerd as before. He wd not permitt me to be moved. I beggd him to get the Kingstown witch but she did not or wd not come. I felt something in James that he did not want her here tho he did not say so. Why did she not come? Ja. says I am too much weakened to go alone on an other ship. I cd take Joseph to look after me but my dear brother will not allow it I suppose he fears what wd become of him shd I die. But does he fear for me? I only want to go home & now Ja. puts the boys interests befor mine. He who beats fucks buys & sells them will not give one to save his own brother. Or does he serve the interest of an other brother since Joseph is Johns? Well these are curst transactions. I shall surely die if I stay in this rottin island. We shall all die.
Friday 20th May. Woke sudenly from a bad dream to find Joseph stood at my bed side, I was shockd thinking at first he was part of the dream, he was so close to me and on his face was that evill smile. I seezed his rist befor he cd step away, he is become stronger than me but I put all my strenth in to gripping him. I said still half asleep, what are you doing, have you come to kill me? He said no, the fever will do that. He tried to step away but I held him tite, pulld my self up in the bed. If I’d had a whip or stick I wd have bate him sore for that remark, as it was I struck him wt the flat of my hand across his face. You are a wicked boy. J: No massa. I struck him again. You are a wicked boy. J: Yes massa. Why do you say the fever will kill me? J: Talkee Amy say so. Why does she not come to help me? J: She say she help you before. Why do you not help me? J: I dont want to. I struck his face. You do as I tell you. J: No. I struck him again. I am yr master. J: No, that is Massa John. I only do what he say. Do you do everything he say? J: Yes. Have you been in his bed? J: No. I struck him. Have you been in his bed? J: No. If he commanded it, you wd. J: No. I struck him. Yes, he is yr master. J: But he does not own me. I struck him. He owns you. J: Not here (hitting his hand on his chest). I struck his face again. We all own you. J: No, none of you. You will never own me. I made to strike him another time but he escaped my hand and ran out. I lay back exawsted. The depth of his insolense astounds me. I hate him as he hates me. As they all hate me.
Friday 27th May. James comes to see me. We playd a game of back gamon but my mind did not stick to it & he did not have the patiens to play badly & show me mercy. After he gamond me 3 times I pushd the bord away & we sat in silence a while.
I said Papa was playing this when they told him he was to die.
James said So I have told you often enogh. What of it?
Tell me agane I said. Doutless I sounded like a child but he told me. The night before in the prison. Papas request of him not to come the next morning. And James did not go to the prison but he went to Kenington common waring an old coat & a hat pulld down low so shd Papa look at him he wd not see him but only a stranger in the crowd. And what a crowd it was a mad cheering shouting mob that spat & whisseld as they drew them on sleds thro the streets. James pushd his way to the scaffold & watchd. How cd he watch? But he has told me so well that I see it my self now – Papa walking unaided up the steps in his shirt brave & unbent & given a space to pray & then the rope put about his neck. The drop James watching in silence the people all chering about him Papa choking his face turning blew. They were expert in their craft the men who killd him. They let him die till the last minute then they stopt him. They revivd him wt brandy & showd him the buckit where they wd burn his bowells then they laid him out & opend his white shirt & cut him open & pulld them out & held him sitting while they showd him them & plungd them in the fire. And his eyes were fixt straght ahead as if he lookd not at what they were doing but thro to another place. And so the life went from him. Our father.
Then James said a thing he never told me befor in all the times he has spoke of this. He had by dint of much elboing & burroing got him self almost to the foot of the platform. When they held Papa there by the sholders in his death throws he was but a few yds away. He said, I always thoght he must be seeing the angels coming for him or Jesus at the rt hand of God. It was a mercy to me to think that. But now I dont believe it.
I trembld to hear this. You do not believe in God I askd. No he said thats not what I ment. I mean that Papa was not seeing God or angels. He was staring at me. A stranger. It did not matter who I was he fixd his eyes on me. I am sure he did not recognise me. It was life he saw that he stared at so hard. He did not wish to go even then after what they had done to him. He did not wish to be taken from this world.
You can not know that I said. How can you know that?
He said, because I have seen it since.
Archibald Jamieson was surprised at the abruptness with which the journal ended. He came out of it as if rudely awakened. Those last lines ran down to the bottom of a right-hand page, and half the book still remained. He turned the leaf expecting more of Sandy’s increasingly morbid ramblings – there was nothing! Nothing but blank, mottled space. Jamieson felt cheated by it, abandoned by Alexander Wedderburn, and he felt a further great emptiness – the absence of Joseph Knight. The boy abused by the invalid man – defying him, but then vanishing, as Sandy Wedderburn himself vanished with the last of the entries. It was as if the ending of the journal deprived them both of life.
Susan’s note had led him to believe that the journal contained a clue as to Knight’s whereabouts, but he saw now that that was impossible. How could something written by a dead man years before Knight even arrived in Scotland reveal him in the present? Nevertheless … Jamieson turned the pages quickly, just in case. Nothing, nothing, nothing – until the final page, where in the same laboured hand he saw the following:
Sure, ’tis a serious thing to die! my soul!
What a strange moment must it be, when near
Thy journey’s end thou hast the gulf in view.
More of the death poem. God, somebody should have rescued him from that! Jamieson looked again at Susan’s note: We always understood it was yellow fever killed uncle A. but it was not that alone – what do you think? Suicide? Perhaps the journal ended so suddenly because Sandy killed himself. But Jamieson didn’t think so. Suicide required a special kind of courage – the courage of slaves, perhaps, the courage of despair – and Sandy had not been endowed with courage of any sort. A sneevilling kind of creature altogether. No, he would have let the fever eat him away sooner than injure himself. He would probably have decided to kill himself only when he was too feeble to accomplish it. Then he would have had something else to complain about.
Jamieson was surprised at his own cynicism. He realised that he had become very angry, reading this inadequate document composed by an inadequate man when he himself was a mere bairn. Had it made Susan angry? Or had she just wanted the thing out of the house?
It took Archibald Jamieson the rest of the day to pinpoint the cause of his anger. When his boys kissed him goodnight on their way to bed, he understood. It was not the insipid, petty nastiness of Sandy Wedderburn that enraged him. It was the negligence, the poverty of emotion of all the Wedderburns. He was silently furious on behalf of the boy Joseph who, if he still lived, would now be a man five or six years older than himself. What kind of man would such neglect have made? But Archibald Jamieson did not really see the man. He kept seeing the boy. He loved children. He detested the thought of a child being treated with such – indifference.