But the young man shakes his head firmly. Mr P, he says, would certainly have rescued poor Saartjie in London, clothed her, yes, but she came later, once he was dead. Besides, she has no need of us. Back home she has been remade in many forms, fought over, tossed hither and thither, clothed and unclothed as in a French farce. What that unfortunate woman needs more than anything is to be left alone, to rest in her warm Eastern Cape grave – although he imagines that she’d rather be wrapped in Parisian couture than her new shroud of native kudu skin. But he holds up a cautionary hand: No further dust-ups; we have quite enough on our plate. Rather, the young man fancies, 1789 was the year of the infant Mr P sopping on the issues of emancipation posed by the great Jeremy Bentham: The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Mary stamps her foot. Well, I certainly can and always could do all of those, so let’s not bother with questions so clearly directed at animals.
Mary may have appointed herself as chief agent, but with all the clamouring for a place in his story he, the poet, the subject of this narrative, will have to keep an eye on her. Keenly as he remembers the unfortunate natives of the Cape Colony, his story cannot accommodate all the abused of those unenlightened times. Now, to proceed. There may be confusion over who has chosen whom, but he is happy to submit to the eeny-meeny-miny-mo of being a subject. Being in the lady writer’s hands, he must wait for her to name him. An author with a good track record, a man of steady outputs, of sound reputation and at least a whiff of celebrity, would have been preferable, but beggars cannot choose. For all her dithering, they will have to make do, for at least she is familiar with the terrain. If only she were younger, more energetic, less hesitant – although it may be the mark of the times rather than of her age, race, sex. No choice then but to keep faith, to believe that she’ll manage. Besides, the indomitable Mary will be there to keep an eye on things.
He fears there’ll be some fanciful feminising, but is in no position to quibble. What will this female author make of him? Of the great cause of liberty? and of the question of slavery that centuries ago he had identified as a poisoned bowl which taints with leprosy the White Man’s soul and his civilizing mission? Above all, will she do justice to his poetry? He cannot expect passion to rise out of her prose, but he will settle for kindness, for tolerance of what has cruelly been dubbed the familiar trot of his iambic tetrameters. Justice and kindness are all he requires. And, of course, for the schoolchildren of the Cheviots to recognise his verse, recognise him as the champion of freedom. He notes that the lady writer’s brow furrows suspiciously, uncertainly. Perhaps justice and kindness cannot always be coaxed into partnership, so he may have to settle for kindness. Is it for her too an act of faith, as her hands hover over the new-fangled keyboard? Och, how she dithers, how she tries his patience; nevertheless, there is no hiding from her. She suspects him of dissembling, that kindness, justice, tolerance are not all that he requires, that he wants the attention of Edinburgh and London. Her frowning asks if it is not enough to be the Father of South African poetry. Well, no, and it is not so much to ask: he wants to be more than a colonial poet, wants to be known for God’s sake, in England and Scotland. (Our man has never cared about Wales and Ireland, Mary whispers.) He must try to think in contemporary terms, but why had Scotland cut him down? Persona non grata for defending natives at the Cape Colony and slaves in the West Indies, understandable perhaps in the bad old times when enrichment from the colonies was the order of the day, but it smarts to have been dismissed as a mere rhymster, a man with a bee in his bunnet and an axe to grind. No doubt he was too innovative, ahead of his time, combining as he did the roles of poet and activist when it was perhaps expected of him to choose between the two. Now, in another century, time has taken the sting from the bee, and the axe could surely be buried. Might a new generation of Scots living in comfort and security, and with their social consciences now keenly honed, not make allowances for both? Might weapons not be laid down with the birth of a new society and room made for the rehabilitation of a colonial struggle poet? Can his roots on the Scottish Borders not now be acknowledged? Has he not made history? He has in any case written many a poem celebrating that land itself, quite free of social comment, surely acceptable to these moderns?
He has in mind a genteel dinner table in Auld Reekie’s New Town, under ornately moulded ceilings, with starched napery and gleaming Caithness crystal – and not for auld lang syne. How splendid and dignified that would be, with dear Margaret by his side. Except, modest Margaret in sensible shoes would not want a resurrection of that kind, would frown upon the fanciness. He will have to hold his own in this new world. With the shadow of Mr Hyde scuttling through dark, dank passageways and Hogg’s demons prancing in silhouette on Arthur’s seat – midst all that doubling – could there not be a place for the neglected poet at such a twenty-first century literary table? Oh he’d even be prepared to put up with doing the honours at Burns Night, much as he deplored in the past the man’s folksy language, or his willingness to seek his fortune in Jamaica, willing, for heaven’s sake, to manage slaves on a sugar plantation. Perhaps it is best not to judge. That was after all a couple of years before the Revolution. And is it not often the task of the poet, as indeed it was in his own case, to travel to the very spring of abomination, if only to discover for himself the workings of injustice, and subsequently take on the fight for righteousness? Fortunately the man’s poetry and his abominable freemasons had saved the day, so that young Rabbie Burns, spared the journey to Jamaica and the ignominious life of a slaver, is highly revered at home. So why not he? This then is the grand project devised by Mary and the dear boy, his loyal protégés: the colonial poet brought home – on the wings of his verse against oppression.
Strictly speaking, on the wings of the woman writer’s prose. (She has perversely dismissed his polite term, lady writer.) If he frets about what she’ll do, how she will proceed, and from which angle, he is also resigned to the fact that it cannot be purely his story, not with all the others clamouring for being, clamouring for control. Whatever happens, some unknown beast will necessarily come yawning and blinking out of the attempt, but he is ready, is game for it, as they say. Invariably there will be a-slipping and a-sliding between third and first persons, elastic conjugations, role-switching perhaps between male and female, subject and author – this century it would seem is without limits – so all he can hope for is that the multi-faced monster will be of friendly mien, free at least of malice. He has had quite enough of neck-wrenching, of having turned first this cheek then that to the men of the master classes, be they political or literary. Practised in forbearance, and having survived so many constructions in the colony, both in life and in death – well, if this turns out to be yet another pooh-poohing, would that a final death follow. But thanks to the faithful protégés who have taken up the cudgels he is ready to give it a go, even in this baffling new world. The question, however, arises: what then is his role? The slipperiness of being a subject; for instance, will he as a white man be expected to step aside? What to do about this talk of a dead white man that he does not understand? He has prided himself on his dealings with all manner of men, but had never before come across the category of white man. He is somewhat tickled that a woman of her kind – ‘of colour’, as they say – has taken on the task (how the world has changed) and, of course, the idea of vengefulness cannot entirely be ruled out. Will he have to gird his loins for the new and unexpected ways in which to be dwarfed? Och, faith, he admonishes himself, the doubting Thomas must be cast out. Perhaps they could come to some kind of agreement, a contract of sorts.
These my subjects do not know of the actual contract, the one that Belinda alludes to with ever so delicate a smile. After that first book – which in retrospect seemed almost soothing to write compared with the terror that now besets me, the terror of expectations – I am quite simply paralysed. My agent, Belinda Montague, honey blonde, absurdly young, painfully, fashionably thin, beautifully shod, and one who slides unnervingly between being