The Confessions of Frannie Langton

by Sara Collins

In truth, no one expects any kind of story from a woman like me. No doubt you think this will be one of those slave histories, all sugared over with misery and despair. But who’d want to read one of those? No, this is my account of myself and my own life and the happiness that came to it, which was not a thing I thought I’d ever be allowed, the happiness or the account.

Not one thing in this world more dangerous than a white woman when she bored. You hear?’

Reading was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to me.

‘I will tell you this, sir, I will tell you what abolishing the trade did. When a man cannot buy stock, he breeds it.

Langton once told me that when the English soldiers rounded up the obeah men in Jamaica, after Tacky’s rebellion, they experimented on them. Tied them with shackles, prodded them with electric machines and magic lanterns, gave them all manner of jolts and shocks. It must have felt like thunder going through their bones, or pops of lightning cleaving their skulls.

Why is it that every white you’ll ever meet either wants to tame you or rescue you?

‘Surely novels are a mere frippery, Frances, when you think of the weight of suffering in the world. They make such a great fuss out of nothing.’ ‘Why not?’ I answered. ‘In the end, life makes nothing out of such a fuss.’

‘Life makes each of us a kettle, boiling up and up and up. Imagine a gentle hand comes along and moves you off the flame. That is opium. It is . . . a gentle rowboat on black water. Sweet dreams.’

Laudanum softens everything to the same grey shapes as an English fog. Any feeling – whether hope, anger, or happiness – becomes just a flicker in the dark.