The cousin them stay another month. They come and go, visiting other plantations, sometimes stay overnight. Them not used to this life, sitting down round eleven to second breakfast, Creole-style. Instead Mistress Caroline push to get served a big fancy meal in the evening. She tell Mistress Margaret she want to do it proper, like back in the Mother Country. So now in the evening they sit down to supper with many dishes like chicken soup, pickled pork, roasted pigeon, beef tongue, cassava cakes, fruit and little sweets, pots of tea, coffee and claret. The servants alongside Sammy, waiting by the table to serve up the food, serve up the wine. Change plates and glasses so many times Stella have to bring in a few extra girls to help wash and clean things overnight. Make Melon even more bad-tempered. No sir, I wouldn’t like to be working in her kitchens. Many a time some poor girl come rushing out the back door crying. And each day that go by, Massa and Mistress Caroline act polite, but barely have two words between them. Storm brewing and we can all feel it.

One morning weeding in the garden, I overhear Master Jack and Mistress Caroline quarrelling.

‘This is appalling! We must do something.’

‘What would you have us do? Sell the plantation. Free the slaves. Then what?’

‘But they are our, our, our …’

‘Our what, Caroline? Relations? You cannot even bring yourself to say it.’

‘There are freed slaves in London who have been brought up and educated as gentlemen and ladies.’

‘Is that what you’re proposing? You take Cargill’s Negro children and bring them up in our household? Perhaps if you were not so headstrong and particular you would have been married by now and have children of your own.’

‘That’s unfair, Jack. We are both happy in our independence. Does it not press on your humanity when you see how the slaves are treated?’

‘Cargill is right. Those damn abolitionists you’ve been associating with have turned your head. Don’t forget it’s the profits of slavery that pay for all those little tea parties of yours, where you talk about freedom and even the rights of workers. Where will it all end?’

‘It is the principle of the thing. How can you father children and keep them as slaves? It’s wrong and you know it. My mind is made up. I’m going to discuss this with Cargill, tonight, after the evening meal.’