The One Way Out

By H. Earle Watson

This book is a must read particularly for someone who would find it interesting to locate themselves in different periods of Jamaican life and therefore, experience the political, economic, social and even psychological environment of those times. The Author makes this possible by having his fictional characters firmly grounded in actual events. We are also invited to look beyond our five senses and become Visionaries, as we look forward to the year 2038 and imagine the generation of that time along with the solutions he recommends for Jamaica. This is a well researched and painstaking effort by a first time Author. It is both descriptive and analytical.

From Slavery, thru Emancipation to the year2038, we witness through generations of one family, in particular, the evolution of Jamaica and the possibilities that lie ahead.

Beverley Manley

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490878508

H. Earle Watson

Earle, a retired Jamaican attorney-at-law and married with three adult children, is finally fulfilling his lifelong ambition to write. This is his first book. Born in rural Jamaica and educated at a city boarding high school, he acted as a union representative and worked in, among other things, industrial engineering and information technology before he became an attorney. Jointly with his wife, he ran their family pastry business, and more recently, he has dabbled in residential housing development. Throughout, his passion for politics and social justice has only increased.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

My name is Brianna Bedward, and this book was originally intended to be the story of my life to date. However, as I prepared the outline of my story it struck me that the story of my family would make a much more interesting narrative – especially in this the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Jamaica where we lived. In truth, the beginning of the known history of my family coincides roughly with the abolition of slavery.

I am not a historian. I work in Mass Communications, so the true Historian will probably find my Historical research spotty in places. That cannot be helped. I have sought to record fact as I found it.

I do not mean to suggest by what I have said above that I have or have had a boring life. Far from it! I have known moments of defeat, despair and of groveling shame. On the other hand I have enjoyed trailblazing successes in my time and experienced soul satisfying joy; but that story is for another telling.

Having announced my surname of Bedward, I now need to disclaim any known relationship to the illustrious Alexander Bedward about whom so much has been written. In my research I have found no evidence for or against any such relationship. In fact, I would make bold to say that the only point of contact between my father and the original Bedward who would have lived fifty years or so before him was their charisma. However, until he was overcome by hubris, Alexander Bedward used his charisma to charm peoples’ souls into the kingdom of heaven. From what I have heard, my father had a different focus. He used his charisma to charm women into his bed.

My mother, bless her soul, resisted strongly until he married her, and then as soon as I was born, he reverted to his favored path. My father was a ‘driver’, by profession. His boast was that he could drive anything on land, from a car to a train. So proud was he of his prowess that he refused to take full time employment and described himself as a freelance driver. In this he was two generations behind his time. These skills would have brought him fame and fortune in the 1940’s. In the year 2000 he was frankly, a nobody; but he didn’t know. Faced with the need for a steady income within the household, my mother trained as a Nurse’s Aide and got employment in the Hospital in Morant Bay. Full time employment in a quasi-professional setting bought her new respect in the nearby village Seaforth where we lived. People now addressed her as Nurse, and space was found for her in the hierarchy of the church.

As roles changed within the family, my father resorted to violence, and she moved to Kingston to avoid it.

So this story is about my mother’s family. She would say proudly I am a Johnson from Radnor. As I grew older I realized that this statement meant something, and I sometimes thought I caught a leer in the eye of some older spinsters when the subject was raised. She was never able to draw up a family tree with which to pinpoint her lineage, but her status as a Johnson from Radnor was never challenged. Ironically, it was not until after we moved to Kingston that we became in fact, a part of the Johnson family

To the extent that the fortunes of the Johnson family ran parallel to those of the island of Jamaica, this is also a story about Jamaica, and inasmuch as Jamaica is a part of the world, it is a story about the world. Indeed, some might say, it is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over those challenges that would hinder its progress in its quest to transform mankind. I guess what is most truthful is to say that it’s a story about people – about people the world over.

PART 1

C 19

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down

And there we wept when we remembered Zion.

For the wicked (who) carried us away in captivity,

required from us a song.

How can we sing Jehovah’s song in a strange land?

Psalm 137 reproduced in Voices of Praise, the Hymnal of the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas.

The Psalm was originally set to music by Brent Dowe et al and performed by ‘The Melodians’ as their reggae hit song By the Rivers of Babylon.

CHAPTER 1

It was the spring of 1832, and McGillivray was on his way down the hill from Radnor to Serge Island. He travelled on horseback. He thoughtfully led a second horse behind him for he was on his way to take possession of a slave that he had recently bought–a male slave of Ibo stock, aged about 30. He had negotiated the deal with McLeod the overseer at the huge Serge Island sugar estate, when they met at Port Royal the previous week.

The ship, the Flying Pelican had docked at Port Royal, and he had gone to collect supplies sent him from England. He collected cloth, flour, butter and bottles of port and other materials that Mr Morgan the owner of Radnor, had sent him from Bristol. There at Port Royal he met McLeod, who was on a similar mission from Serge Island where he was the overseer.

Sugar returns at Serge Island were declining. The Americans had taken to growing their own ‘cane’, and were even producing sugar from beet root. Even in London, there were murmurs that Jamaican and West Indian sugar was now too expensive, and they had begun to look elsewhere for a cheaper source. The market for Jamaican sugar had begun to shrink. Serge Island did not suffer alone. All Jamaican sugar estates were in financial trouble.

McLeod’s solution was to sell a gang of slaves including its driver, John. There were twenty-five slaves in the gang. If the demand for sugar increased again, he reasoned, each of the remaining gangs could be made to work an extra two hours each day, and the production shortfall would be replenished. He had done careful arithmetic, and arrived at the conclusion that the immediate needs of the estate would best be met by selling the gang. ‘Jobbing’ them out to whosoever might need their labor would not work. With sugar in decline he knew he would not be able to find work for even half of their working time, and the estate would have to bear the full burden of feeding and maintaining them. This was a losing proposition. Then and there at Port Royal, he accepted McGillivray’s note in exchange for John, and they arranged for John to be collected this Saturday morning in May.

McGillivray was a square shouldered Scotsman, short and squat whose dour appearance belied his mild mannered approach to life. His bold eyes seemed to pierce you when he stared at you. He had come to Radnor a decade earlier to work for his uncle who was then the overseer at Radnor. A quick study, he learnt the ropes within three years, and when his uncle returned to Scotland five years ago, he was the natural choice for the position of overseer. On his uncle’s recommendation, Mr. Morgan wrote to him from Bristol offering him the position, and he responded immediately, accepting with thanks.

He’s a good lad McLeod had said. You’ll be glad you bought him.

Good for what? McGillivray had asked drily.

Good for anything, came back the reply. He’s a quick study. He can learn anything you teach him. I guarantee you, in three years you won’t be able to do without him. He’ll be managing your estate.

We’ll see, McGillivray retorted.

He was in pensive mood as he rode down the hill. It was a journey of almost thirty miles. As was the practice among the white estate agents and overseers, he fully expected that McLeod would invite him to stay for dinner and the night, and tomorrow he would ride back to Radnor with John, his new slave. John had a ‘wife’ and child at Serge Island, and naturally he wished for McGillivray to buy them too, but McGillivray’s budget would not allow that. It meant that for the first few months at least he would have to give John weekly or fortnightly tickets to visit his ‘family’; hopefully, after that John would make a new arrangement for his personal life at Radnor. This is how it always worked with the slaves.

I love the peace and quiet of these Blue Mountains, he thought, as he rode. Radnor was at least 3,000 feet above Serge Island, and being less than 2,000 feet as the crow flies below the peak of the Mountain it was the highest coffee plantation in the island, and Dr. Laborie’s manual for coffee planters recommended that the higher the plantation, the better the coffee. Laborie, a Doctor and coffee planter in the neighboring island of Saint Domingue, emigrated to Jamaica to escape the political turmoil in his own island and wrote an English language manual for Jamaican ‘would be’ coffee planters. ‘The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingue’, was a thorough and exhaustive manual. The Jamaican coffee industry owed the good Doctor much.

At this time of day on the coastal plains of Jamaica, the blazing sun would have forced McGillivray to stop for a moment to relax in the shade of some tree, but here in the mountain he did not even need the broad-rimmed hat that he wore. Besides, the vegetation on either side of the road that they had cut through the mountain from Radnor to Penn Lyne Castle provided ample shade. The roadway meandered through huge trees on either side, some of them indigenous, others planted by his uncle when he first organized the coffee plantation. The result was a pleasant and relaxing journey despite the steepness of the incline.

As the sugar industry declined, the demand for Jamaican coffee grew. This is what prompted the Morgans to buy into the Jamaican coffee industry. As provision merchants in the port town of Bristol, they saw an opportunity to provide themselves with their own coffee. The gamble yielded astronomical rewards over the years. The Morgans bought into coffee at the beginning of the boom years of Jamaica coffee, and they gave themselves the best possible chance of success by establishing their plantation so high up on the mountain. Now, McGillivray was embarking on a drive to expand the coffee growing areas of the plantation, indeed to increase it by fifty percent.

Although the plantation was commonly called Radnor, it incorporated also the adjacent 300 acre property known as Springfield. Radnor itself was 800 acres. Radnor and Springfield were two separate properties under a single ownership and one management, but each had its own works yard, its own negro houses and its own negro grounds, where the slaves were permitted to grow ground provisions. There were separate coffee pieces, separate woodlands, and separate pens for the livestock on each property. The two properties were run as two separate entities by one man, McGillivray. The Springfield estate sat to the northwest of Radnor, and at its highest point, was barely two thousand feet as the crow flies from the peak.

Besides McGillivray, there were two other white men at Radnor. The German, Voss, was the engineer who kept the coffee mills going, who supervised all construction, whether of buildings, bridge, fording, or even drainage for the roads. Harris, the Englishman, was a sort of Chief Administrative Officer who kept the books and managed the inventory for the sick house and the plantation in general. Both men, it was said, had boarded ship for Jamaica in an effort to escape the wages of their sins in England.

Voss, as a young adventurer, had boarded ship in his native Hamburg, intending to see the world. He barely made it across the English Channel to Dover, where he awakened early one morning in the company of a lady of doubtful virtue, only to find that his ship had set sail without him. Resourceful and skilled, he had made his way across the south of England, doing odd jobs, and ended up in Bristol city. By this time he spoke English fluently though with a thick German accent.He was thoroughly enjoying England, especially the robust English wenches he would meet in the Ale houses at night. Inevitably, for a man of his forthright nature, conflict arose one night in a Pub, with an Englishman whose sour temper was legendary. In the ensuing conflagration, the man who was larger and stronger than Voss, began to get the better of him. Voss, like so many men before him on the stage of the ongoing drama of the human race, seized a club, (in this case, a length of two inch piping), and struck his opponent. The blow landed on his temple. He fell dead instantly. Voss ran as fast as he could to the harbor in Bristol. He ended up on ‘the ‘Flying Pelican’, which was about to set sail for Jamaica.

Harris, on the other hand, had not come to Jamaica willingly. A book-keeper in a small printery, he fell violently in love with the owner’s wife, and shared with his older brother, his intention to elope with his mistress, and to kill her husband if he attempted to stop him. His older brother joined him at the Pub one evening, ostensibly to discuss the matter. They took him on board ‘the Flying Pelican’ at three a.m. next morning, in a drunken stupor. He awoke at mid-day, retching violently, as much from his excesses of the night before as from the rolling of the ship. ‘The Flying Pelican’ was by then at sea for over six hours, Jamaica bound.

These two men Voss and Harris, shared living quarters above the coffee house at Radnor; Cubbah and Daphne (two female slaves), took care of the living quarters and the needs of the two men. This extended to their sexual needs, though the men did not limit themselves to these two women, nor indeed did the women feel constrained to remain chaste for these two white men. They were creole slaves, born in Jamaica, both in their mid-twenties. The culture of the slave society promoted promiscuity. The men were promiscuous because it was the nature of men to be so. The slave owners and masters turned a blind eye to the women’s promiscuity, as they hoped that in this way the women might have more children and every child born in slavery became the asset of his mother’s owner.

For a fact, some slaves attempted to establish permanent unions among themselves, but this was always within the context that the owner or overseer, indeed any of the white men, could have the woman whenever he wished, and that the woman was likely to go off on a frolic of her own with another slave. It was often the cause of fights between the men, and the master was often called upon to resolve these conflicts, which was done by flogging both men, and sometimes the women too.

The white men often rewarded the slave women with a small monetary token after sex, but this was never obligatory as the men were their masters. The slave women often gave their bodies to slave men out of sexual attraction. When they slept with the white men, they did so because they were slaves, and had no option, but they often had their eyes on upward social mobility, for if they produced a mulatto child, the child, though a slave, could influence their ‘promotion’ to house slave status. The slave children of the great house had a much easier life, and were taught to read and write. Though slaves themselves, they were not sent to work in the fields except as punishment for some misdemeanor. The privileges of house slave children would give them a good head start after emancipation.

The white men socialized among themselves, sharing meals or hunting for wild hogs together. Sometimes they went to other estates for dinner, where they would come in contact with that rare commodity – a white woman. The white community was forced together by virtue of there being so few in a community with so many blacks; they were ever fearful of black revolt, and looked over their shoulders always. All the social distinctions and divisions among white men that prevailed in Europe vanished in Jamaica. They were well advised to ‘circle the wagons’ as they did, for Jamaica has the historical distinction of carrying out more slave revolts than any other island.

The slaves developed a two-faced attitude towards the white men. To their faces they were obedient, obsequious, fawning even, but behind their backs, in groups within the negro quarters, they shared stories of how they had ‘punished’ the white men. The white men only suspected some of the things that might have been cooked into their meals. They had no way of knowing for certain. They had absolute dominance over their slaves and often administered corporal punishment; some believed they had the right to administer capital punishment if the misdeed of the slaves demanded it. Some over-seers outdid themselves in finding new ways to punish the slaves and underscore their dominance. Thomas Thistlewood, a slave owner in Westmoreland wrote in his diary how he punished runaways by having five male slaves hold him down while a sixth defecated in his mouth, which was then taped up. It was a culture of overt violence and covert reprisal.

This total dominance of master over slave would cause the slave over the two hundred plus years of slavery, to re-visit his inner self, and set new parameters for his personal aspirations. This was the great tragedy of the slave trade. It had to be impossible for the Master to relate to the slave in this way unless he held a special perspective – a perspective within which the slave is less than human, and could therefore justifiably be denied the basic rights demanded for all human beings. Many slave attitudes still prevail today, almost two hundred years after the abolition of slavery. Today, even, in the twenty-first century, peoples’ lives are disrupted, sometimes destroyed, because of attitudes that had their origin in slavery – victims in a tragedy with an unseen villain.

But by this time the owners of the sugar estates had accrued prodigious wealth. It was now the turn of the coffee plantation owner, and new entrepreneurs planned one day to be included in this number.

CHAPTER 2

It’s going to happen sooner or later, McGillivray said. He sat back, glass in hand in a large wooden lounge chair on the verandah of the Serge Island Great House. He was addressing McLeod who sat opposite him on a similar chair. The chairs had feather cushions. They were discussing the impending abolition of slavery, and trying to imagine how it would affect their lives.

Yes, agreed; but what happens after that? McLeod asked. It was evening and the men had dined sumptuously. McLeod had ordered a hog killed and two chickens also. Sweet potatoes, plantains and vegetables from the negro grounds completed the meal. Three other white men Gabay, Laurie and deLisser from the Serge Island estate had been invited for the evening, and now they sat enjoying a glass of wine and a cigar. How do I produce my sugar?

Your slaves will become wage earners and you will pay them for their labor said McGillivray. Nothing else will change.

Pay them with what? McLeod asked. My sales are declining. I am hardly making a profit. There is too much competition.

Then you must use your assets creatively, said McGillivray. You can’t continue to give them free lodgings and free lands for their crops, if you are required to pay them a salary. Their rental must be used to offset at least a part of their wages.

This was met with general agreement.

Phoeba the house girl appeared on the verandah with roasted cashew nuts which she offered first to McGillivray. Laurie and deLisser winked at one another.

Later that evening, when McGillivray was preparing himself for sleep, she appeared at his bedroom door to enquire whether he needed anything else before she went to bed.

The joys of colonial life, McGillivray thought, as he pulled her by her hand into the room and closed the door. Phoeba was a quadroon, the daughter of McLeod’s predecessor as overseer and the house slave who supervised the running of the Great House. She was nineteen and she had grown up in the Great House. In addition to her housekeeping skills, her mother had made sure she could read and write. Her mother had warned her to discourage the attentions of the young male slaves who were always hanging around, and to seek out the company of the white men who would visit Serge Island from time to time. Even at age nineteen, no one was more aware than Phoeba of the importance of catching the eye of a white man. It could change her life forever.

McGillivray would prove to be a disappointment for her domestic ambitions. He enjoyed her lithe athleticism but he was not into making commitments. Even in the context of slave society where he was master, he believed commitment would be a distraction he could ill afford. But, despite that, she lingered in his memory long after he had returned to Radnor.

He had spent the afternoon talking to John, his new slave. McLeod greeted him on his arrival at Serge Island, and immediately sent for John.He left them alone. John had been well recommended by McLeod, and McGillivray had big plans for him.

The issue of John’s ‘wife’ and child occupied a lot of the afternoon’s discussion. Eventually, John accepted that McGillivray could not afford to purchase any more slaves at this time, but they could work together and if John saved enough money to buy his ‘wife’ from McLeod, McGillivray would buy the child.

The trip back to Radnor was uneventful. The two horses were fresh and fit, and John turned out to be a good horseman, but it was all uphill, so it took rather longer than it had taken McGillivray to make the descent. McGillivray used the time to familiarize John with the operations of a coffee plantation. John was to start as a Driver for his third crew. He discussed the layout of the plantation, the processes involved in planting, weeding, and reaping the coffee; the drying, and stripping processes. In the meantime he was sizing up John and agreeing with McLeod that he was a man of above average intelligence, who was highly motivated by the prospect of being re-united with his family. McGillivray was satisfied that he had made a good purchase. He paid One Hundred and Fifty Pounds for John.

McGillivray managed to establish John very quickly at Radnor. On his first day, he presented John to both Voss and Harris with instructions that John should try to learn as much as he could from Voss, so that he could assist him in keeping the plantation going. The two men hit it off instantly, and it was a source of much amusement for McGillivray to hear them having a conversation. Voss’ guttural English and John’s peculiar patois, his English being tainted not a little by the Akan dialect of his African forbears.

He gave John land adjacent to the negro grounds, and lumber to build himself a house. Voss guided John’s gang through the process.

John proved to be a quick study, and he mastered the entire coffee growing and production process in his first year at Radnor. In addition, he spent as much time as he could with Voss learning all the idiosyncrasies of the estate. It was not long before he became an indispensable fixture on the plantation.

His disposition was gentle, and his instinct was always to see the brighter side of things. He smiled a lot. He seldom needed to flog any of the slaves in his gang, but the productivity of his gang increased exponentially after he took control of them. This performance inevitably earned him promotion to driver of the first gang. He spent time cultivating his ground, and the slave women sold his produce along with their own in the market at Seaforth. He was not above the occasional dalliance with one or other of the slave women, but he never took them into his house. He saved his earnings assiduously, and within fifteen months, he was able to take up McGillivray on the purchasing of his wife and son.

McGillivray sought to postpone the process, explaining that the Queen had already passed a law manumitting the slaves, and that emancipation was not far away. John for the first time became angry, and McGillivray quickly capitulated. Together they made the journey down the hill to Serge Island where John received the shock of his life. His ‘wife’ now had another child, a mulatto, the obvious child of Laurie the red headed works manager