Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [18]
The road climbed upward. On one side the wall of green, on the other a steep drop to the ravine below. We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue-green sea. There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you.
‘What a extreme green,’ was all I could say, and thinking of Emile calling to the fishermen and the sound of his voice, I asked about him.
‘They take short cuts. They will be at Granbois long before we are.’
Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hill too near. And the woman is a stranger. Her pleading expression annoys me. I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks. I looked down at the coarse mane of the horse … Dear Father. The thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provision made for her (that must be seen to). I have a modest competence now. I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no mean requests. None of the furtive shabby manoeuvres of a younger son. I have sold my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such a bad bargain? The girl is thought to be beautiful, she is beautiful. And yet …
Meanwhile the horses jogged along a very bad road. It was getting cooler. A bird whistled, a long sad note. ‘What bird is that?’ She was too far ahead and did not hear me. The bird whistled again. A mountain bird. Shrill and sweet. A very lonely sound.
She stopped and called, ‘Put your coat on now.’ I did so and realized that I was no longer pleasantly cool but cold in my sweat-soaked shirt.
We rode on again, silent in the slanting afternoon sun, the wall of trees on one side, a drop on the other. Now the sea was a serene blue, deep and dark.
We came to a little river. ‘This is the boundary of Granbois.’ She smiled at me. It was the first time I had seen her smile simply and naturally. Or perhaps it was the first time I had felt simple and natural with her. A bamboo spout jutted from the cliff, the water coming from it was silver blue. She dismounted quickly, picked a large shamrock-shaped leaf to make a cup, and drank. The she picked another leaf, folded it and brought it to me. ‘Taste. This is mountain water.’ Looking up smiling, she might have been any pretty English girl and to please her I drank. It was cold, pure and sweet, a beautiful colour against the thick green leaf.
She said, ‘After this we go down then up again. Then we are there.’
Next time she spoke she said, ‘The earth is red here, do you notice?’
‘It’s red in parts of England too.’
‘Oh England, England,’ she called back mockingly, and the sound went on and on like a warning I did not choose to hear.
Soon the road was cobblestoned and we stopped at a flight of stone steps. There was a large screw pine to the left and to the right what looked like an imitation of an English summer house – four wooden posts and a thatched roof. She dismounted and ran up the steps. At the top a badly cut, coarse-grained lawn and at the end of the lawn a shabby white house. ‘Now you are at Granbois.’ I looked at the mountains purple against a very blue sky.
Perched up on wooden stilts the house seemed to shrink from the forest behind it and crane eagerly out to the distant sea. It was more awkward that ugly, a little sad as if it knew it could not last. A group of negroes were standing at the foot of the veranda steps. Antoinette ran across the lawn and as a followed her I collided with a boy coming in the opposite direction. He rolled his eyes, looking alarmed and went on towards the horses without a word of apology. A man’s voice said,