Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [17]
The other two followed slowly, looking back several times.
As if this was a signal a second woman appeared at the door, then a third.
‘Is Caro,’ Antoinette said. ‘I’m sure it’s Caro. Caroline,’ she called, waving, and the woman waved back. A gaudy old creature in a brightly flowered dress, a striped head handkerchief and gold ear-rings.
‘You’ll get soaked, Antoinette,’ I said.
‘No, the rain is stopping.’ She held up the skirt of her riding habit and ran across the street. I watched her critically. She wore a tricorne hat which became her. At least it shadowed her eyes which are too large and can be disconcerting. She never blinks at all it seems to me. Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either. And when did I begin to notice all this about my wife Antoinette? After we left Spanish Town I suppose. Or did I notice it before and refuse to admit what I saw? Not that I had much time to notice anything. I was married one month after I arrived in Jamaica and for nearly three weeks of that time I was in bed with fever.
The two women stood in the doorway of the hut gesticulating, talking not English but the debased French patois they use in the island. The rain began to drip down the back of my neck adding to my feeling of discomfort and melancholy.
I thought about the letter which should have been written to England a week ago. Dear Father …
‘Caroline asks if you will shelter in her house.’
This was Antoinette. She spoke hesitatingly as if she expected me to refuse, so it was easy to do so.
‘But you are getting wet.’ she said.
‘I don’t mind that.’ I smiled at Caroline and shook my head.
‘She will be very disappointed,’ said my wife, crossed the street again and went into the dark hut.
Amélie, who had been sitting with her back to us, turned round. Her expression was so full of delighted malice, so intelligent, above all so intimate that I felt ashamed and looked away.
‘Well,’ I thought. ‘I have had fever. I am not myself yet.’
The rain was not so heavy and I went to talk to the porters. The first man was not a native of the island. ‘This a very wild place – not civilized. Why do you come here?’ He was called the Young Bull he told me, and he was twenty-seven years of age. A magnificent body and a foolish conceited face. The other man’s name was Emile, yes, he was born in the village, he lived there. ‘Ask him how old he is,’ suggested the Young Bull. Emile said in a questioning voice, ‘Fourteen? Yes I have fourteen years master.’
‘Impossible,’ I said. I could see the grey hairs in his sparse beard.
‘Fifty-six years perhaps.’ He seemed anxious to please.
The Young Bull laughed loudly. ‘He don’t know how old he is, he don’t think about it. I tell you sir these people are not civilized.’
Emile muttered, ‘My mother she knows, but she dead.’ Then he produced a blue rag which he twisted into a pad and put on his head.
Most of the women were outside their doors looking at us but without smiling. Sombre people in a sombre place. Some of the men were going to their boats. When Emile shouted, two of them came towards him. He sang in a deep voice. They answered, then lifted the heavy wicker basket and swung it on to his head-pad singing. He tested the balance with one hand and strode off, barefooted on the sharp stones, by far the gayest member of the wedding party. As the Young Bull was loaded up he glanced at me sideways boastfully and he too sang to himself in English.
The boy brought the horses to a large stone and I saw Antoinette coming from the hut. The sun blazed out and steam rose from the green behind us. Amélie took her shoes off, tied them together and hung them round her neck. She balanced her small basket on her head and swung away as easily as the porters. We mounted, turned a corner and the village was out of sight. A cock crowed loudly and I remembered the night before which we had spent in the town. Antoinette had a room to herself, she was exhausted. I lay awake listening to cocks crowing all night,