‘I write from on the road. We are on the road to Bristol. The sun is shining. I walk ahead, Friday follows carrying the pack which contains our provisions as well as some few items from the house, and the wig, from which he will not be parted. The robes he wears, instead of a coat.
‘No doubt we make a strange sight, the barefoot woman in breeches and her black slave (my shoes pinch, the old apeskin sandals are fallen apart). When passers-by stop to question us, I say that I am on my way to my brother in Slough, that my footman and I were robbed of our horses and clothes and valuables by highwaymen. This story earns me curious looks. Why? Are there no more highwaymen on the roads? Were all the highwaymen hanged while I was in Bahia? Do I seem an unlikely owner of horses and valuables? Or is my air too blithe to befit one stripped bare mere hours before?
‘In Ealing we passed a cobbler’s. I took out one of the books from the pack, a volume of sermons handsomely bound in calf, and offered to exchange it for new shoes. The cobbler pointed to your name on the flyleaf. “Mr Foe of Stoke Newington,” I said, “lately deceased.” “Have you no other books?” asked he. I offered him the
What a boon to be stricken speechless too!
‘To you, Mr Foe, a journey to Bristol may call to mind hearty meals at roadside inns and diverting encounters with strangers from all walks of life. But remember, a woman alone must travel like a hare, one ear forever cocked for the hounds. If it happens we are set upon by footpads, what protection will Friday afford me? He never had call to protect Cruso; indeed, his upbringing has taught him to not so much as raise a hand in self-defence. Why should he regard an assault on me as of concern to him? He does not understand that I am leading him to freedom. He does not know what freedom is. Freedom is a word, less than a word, a noise, one of the multitude of noises I make when I open my mouth. His master is dead, now he has a mistress — that is all he knows. Having never wished for a master, why should he guard his mistress? How can he guess that there is any goal to our rambling, that without me he is lost? “Bristol is a great port,” I tell him. “Bristol is where we landed when the ship brought us back from the island. Bristol is where you saw the great chimney belching smoke, that so amazed you. From Bristol ships sail to all corners of the globe, principally to the Americas, but also to Africa, which was once your home. In Bristol we will seek out a ship to take you back to the land of your birth, or else to Brazil and the life of a freeman there.”’
‘Yesterday the worst came to pass. We were stopped on the Windsor road by two drunken soldiers who made their intention on my person all too plain. I broke away and took to the fields and escaped, with Friday at my heels, in mortal terror all the while we ran that they would shoot upon us. Now I pin my hair up under my hat and wear a coat at all times, hoping to pass for a man.
‘In the afternoon it began to rain. We sheltered under a hedge, trusting it was but a shower. But the rain had truly set in. So at last we trudged on, wet to the bone, till we came to an alehouse. With some misgiving I pushed the door open and led Friday in, making for a table in the obscurest corner.
‘I do not know whether the people of that place had never seen a black man before, or never seen a woman in breeches, or simply never seen such a bedraggled pair, but all speech died as we entered, and we crossed the room in a silence in which I could plainly hear the splashing of water from the eaves outside. I thought to myself: This is a great mistake better we had sought out a hayrick and sheltered there, hungry or not. But I put on a bold face and pulled out a chair for Friday, indicating to him that he should sit. From under the sodden robe came the same smell I had smelled when the sailors brought him aboard ship: a smell of fear.
‘The innkeeper himself came to our table. I asked civilly for two measures of small beer and a plate of bread and cheese. He made no reply, but stared pointedly at Friday and then at me. “This is my manservant,” I said — “He is as clean as you or I.” “Clean or dirty, he wears shoes in this house,” he replied. I coloured. “If you will attend to serving us, I will attend to my servant’s dress,” I said. “This is a clean house, we do not serve strollers or gipsies,” said the innkeeper, and turned his back on us. As we made our way to the door a lout stuck out his foot, causing Friday to stumble, at which there was much guffawing.
‘We skulked under hedgerows till darkness fell and then crept into a barn. I was shivering by this time in my wet clothes. Feeling about in the dark, I came to a crib filled with clean hay. I stripped off my clothes and burrowed like a mole into the hay, but still found no warmth. So I climbed out again and donned the sodden clothes and stood miserably in the dark, my teeth chattering. Friday seemed to have disappeared. I could not even hear his breathing. As a man born in the tropic forest he should have felt the cold more keenly than I; yet he walked barefoot in the dead of winter and did not complain. “Friday,” I whispered. There was no reply.
‘In some despair, and not knowing what else to do, I stretched out my arms and, with my head thrown back, began to turn in Friday’s dance. It is a way of drying my clothes, I told myself: I dry them by creating a breeze. It is a way of keeping warm. Otherwise I shall perish of cold. I felt my jaw relax, and heat, or the illusion of heat, begin to steal through my limbs. I danced till the very straw seemed to warm under my feet. I have discovered why Friday dances in England, I thought, smiling to myself; which, if we had remained at Mr Foe’s, I should never have learned. And I should never have made this discovery had I not been soaked to the skin and then set down in the dark in an empty ham. From which we may infer that there is after all design in our lives, and if we wait long enough we are bound to see that design unfolding; just as, observing a carpet-maker, we may see at first glance only a tangle of threads; yet, if we are patient, flowers begin to emerge under our gaze, and prancing unicorns, and turrets.
‘Thinking these thoughts, spinning round, my eyes closed, a smile on my lips, I fell, I believe, into a kind of trance; for when next I knew, I was standing still, breathing heavily, with somewhere at my mind’s edge an intimation that I had been far away, that I had seen wondrous sights. Where am I? I asked myself, and crouched down and stroked the floor; and when it came back to me that I was in Berkshire, a great pang wrenched my bean; for what I had seen in my trance, whatever it had been — I could summon back nothing distinct, yet felt a glow of after-memory, if you can understand that — had been a message (but from whom?) to tell me there were other lives open to me than this one in which I trudged with Friday across the English countryside, a life of which I was already heartily sick. And in that same instant I understood why Friday had danced all day in your house: it was to remove himself, or his spirit, from Newington and England, and from me too. For was it to be wondered at that Friday found life with me as burdensome as I found life with him? As long as we two are cast in each other’s company, I thought, perhaps it is best that we dance and spin and transport ourselves. “It is your turn to dance, Friday,” I called into the darkness, and climbed into my crib and piled hay upon myself and fell asleep.
At first light I awoke, glowing with warmth, calm and refreshed. I discovered Friday asleep on a hurdle behind the door and shook him, surprised to find him so sluggish, for I had thought savages slept with one eye open. But likely he had lost his savage habits on the island, where he and Cruso had no enemies.’
‘I do not wish to make our journey to Bristol seem more full of incident than it has truly been. But I must tell you of the dead babe.
‘Some miles outside Marlborough, as we were walking steadily enough down an empty road, my eye fell on a parcel lying in the ditch. I sent Friday to fetch it, thinking I know not what, perhaps that it was a bundle of clothes fallen from a carriage; or perhaps I was simply curious. But when I began to unwind the wrapping-cloth I found it to be bloody, and was afraid to go on. Yet where there is blood there is fascination. So I went on and unwrapped the body, stillborn or perhaps stifled, all bloody with the afterbirth, of a little girl, perfectly formed, her hands clenched up by her ears, her features peaceful, barely an hour or two in the world. Whose child was she? The fields around us were empty. Half a mile away stood a duster of cottages; but how welcome would we be if, like accusers, we returned to their doorstep that which they had cast out? Or what if they took the child to be mine and laid hands on me and baled me before the magistrates? So I wrapped the babe again in its bloody winding-cloth and laid it in the bottom of the ditch and guiltily led Friday away from that place. Try though I might, I could not put from my thoughts the little sleeper who would never awake, the pinched eyes that would never see the sky, the curled fingers that would never open. Who was the child but I, in another life? Friday and I slept among a grove of trees that night (it was the night I tried to eat acorns, I was so hungry). I had slept but a minute when I awoke with a
