‘From the dirt, nae doubt,’ said Kinloch.
‘I’m not so sure,’ James said. ‘Davie and I have been giving this some thought. I begin to wonder if it’s not the other way round – if the dirt does not come from the worms.’
Kinloch snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Well,’ said Fyfe, ‘why should the soil which gives us our good crops cause so many ailments among the slaves? A dirt-eater comes down with everything: the flux, dropsy, fatigue, stupidity –’
‘And there ye pit your finger on the nub,’ said Kinloch. ‘Idleness and idiocy. The only thing that will cure thae ills is a thrashing. A good sound Negro never came doun wi dirt-eating.’
‘But George,’ said James, ‘suppose for a moment that a good sound Negro did. What would be the cause of it? Suppose, for example, that he got the ground itch – you’ll agree any Negro can get that between his toes?’
‘We’d get it if we didna wear shoes. Ye’re no wanting to gie them all shoes, are ye?’
‘The ground itch is caused by hook worms,’ said James, ignoring the question. ‘You clean out the scabs, bathe the feet, and with time the itch is gone. But suppose the worms – some of them – get under the skin, and into the blood. Where do they go? They go through the blood to the lungs. Your good Negro coughs to clear his lungs. This brings the worms to his mouth. He takes a drink. The worms are carried into his gut. They feed there. The slave, consequently, is constantly hungry. He has a craving for whatever will fill his belly. The cane, or the ground it grows on. The worms grow inside him. They lay their eggs. The good Negro shits in the cane field. His shit is full of eggs. Need I go on?’
‘I see,’ said Kinloch. ‘Ye mean getting one slave to shit in another’s mouth may spread the worms?’
‘For God’s sake, man,’ said Fyfe, ‘forget about that. The ground is covered in hook worms. All we’re saying is, if Plato is infested with worms, maybe that’s the cause of his dirt-eating. Not the other way round.’
‘It’s the same with the yaws,’ James went on. ‘It never seems to come on its own. And you’ll grant that not even the most devious malingerer can feign it.’
‘He’d be a magician if he could,’ said John. ‘And mad.’ The raspberry-like sores and eruptions on face and body, the weeping tubercules and ulcers, the swellings and blisters on soles of feet and palms of hand, the obvious and intense pain caused by all this – nobody could, or would want to, fake the yaws.
‘It’s their foul habits,’ Kinloch said decisively, reaching for a third slice of cold plum pudding. ‘If they didna live such filthy lives we wouldna lose so many o them. Ye never see a white person wi the yaws.’
‘Perhaps that’s because our houses are bigger, airier,’ said Fyfe. ‘We die of all the other things they have, though. Yellow fever, the flux, dropsy. And then we have our own diseases: I never saw a Negro with the gout, or the dry belly-ache.’
‘Ye’re contradicting yoursels,’ said Kinloch. ‘First ye say that we’re like them, then that we’re no. I ken where I stand. I’m as like a neger as a – as a thoroughbred horse is like an Arab’s camel.’
‘I only wonder,’ said Fyfe, ‘if we exchanged places with them, if we’d exchange diseases too. As you said yourself, if we took off our shoes …’
Charles Hodge, who had been sitting, eyes closed, trying to contain a growing disagreement between his stomach and either the oysters or the topic under discussion, suddenly startled everyone with a drawling laugh. ‘Haw! Exchange places, sir? Haw! Take off our shoes! That’s the kind of metaphysical … perprosal you’d expect from a Scotchman. It’s a impossibility. Mr Kinloch is right. We are horses, not camels!’
He stood up, knocking his chair over, and swayed out of the room to be sick. The others watched him go, only vaguely interested in seeing if he made it outdoors. If he did not, it would just be one more mess for the maids to clear up in the morning.
‘All Davie is saying,’ said John, ‘is we should take more care of them. That’s Christian if nothing else.’
‘Oh man, dinna let them near Christ!’ Kinloch exploded. ‘Christ and kindness are troublemakers on a plantation. If ye gie them a sniff at Christ, they’ll say they’re saved and that makes them as good as ony white man. Treat them wi kindness and they’ll repay ye wi idleness, complaints, grievances. It’s but a step frae there to resentment and plotting.’
‘Kindness doesn’t enter into it,’ said James Wedderburn. ‘And I’m not interested in saving their souls either. I want as much work out of my slaves as you. I want as much money out of the crop. The best way to get that is healthy slaves. How much does a slave cost? A good one, a young, fit, Africa-born Coromantee?’
‘Fifty pound,’ said Kinloch.
‘Sixty,’ said James.
‘Ye’re being robbed.’
‘Well, give or leave the ten pounds, it’s a high price. I want that slave to last ten years at least. Perhaps twenty.’
‘Away!’
‘I have to season him for a year –’
‘Six months.’
‘– feed him and clothe him while he lives. I want him free of worms, yellow fever, the flux, poxes, consumption, the yaws – anything that stops him working. If I whip him every time he is ill, that is more time lost while he mends. Whip a slave for theft, or insolence, or running away, or refusing to work – of course. But let’s be sure we whip them for the right things. Oh, and I want him to make me a lot more slave bairns too. I don’t practise kindness, George. I practise economy.’
Except when it comes to your own slave bairns, John thought, but he said nothing.
‘I prefer common sense. If ye treat a black soft, ye soften yoursel. Then ye think ye’ll ease their labour a bit, gie them better hooses. The next thing ye’re beginning to doubt the haill institution.’
‘You’re over-harsh, George,’ said John. ‘We are not tyrants.’
‘Aye we are,’ said Kinloch. ‘We maist certainly are. We hae to be. It’s the only honest way. If ye look at the thing true, ye’ll agree.’
Later, long after Hodge had been put to bed with a bucket beside his head, and Kinloch and Fyfe, blazing drunk and barely able to stand, had somehow mounted their horses and trotted off homeward, the four Wedderburns played a few rather listless hands of rummy. They were all staying the night at Glen Isla. In the darkness the singing and drumming from the slave huts rose and faded on a light breeze.
James kept lifting his head, as if trying to catch something of the songs, almost as if he were envious of a better party. Peter pulled out his dirty book and, between turns, studied the pages for salacious passages, silently mouthing the French as he read. Alexander yawned constantly. Only John was concentrating much on the cards.
At last James flung down his hand. ‘Damn it, John, Peter was right. I could devour that Peach just now. Or any of them. Let’s go down for them.’
John shook his head. ‘That, I think, even George Kinloch would think unwise at this time of night.’
‘Well, can we not send for them?’
‘No one to send. Unless you want to ask the formidable Phoebe. No? You’ll just have to suffer alone then. Drink some more wine.’
Sandy stood up. ‘I’m for my bed,’ he said. He sidled out, clutching the other French book.
‘Don’t be up all night now,’