Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [23]
She listened, then sang with me:
‘Shine bright, shine bright Robin as you die.’
There was no one in the house and only two candles in the room which had been so brilliantly lit. Her room was dim, with a shaded candle by the bed and another on the dressing-table. There was a bottle of wine on the round table. It was very late when I poured out two glasses and told her to drink to our happiness, to our love and the day without end which would be tomorrow. I was young then. A short youth mine was
I woke next morning in the green-yellow light, feeling uneasy as though someone were watching me. She must have been awake for some time. Her hair was plaited and she wore a fresh white chemise. I turned to take her in my arms, I meant to undo the careful plaits, but as I did so there was a soft discreet knock.
She said, ‘I have sent Christophine away twice. We wake very early here. The morning is the best time.’
‘Come in,’ she called and Christophine came in with our coffee on a tray. She was dressed up and looking very imposing. The skirt of her flowered dress trailed after her making a rustling noise as she walked and her yellow silk turban was elaborately tied. Long heavy gold ear-rings pulled down the lobes of her ears. She wished us good morning smiling and put the tray of coffee, cassava cakes and guava jelly on the round table. I got out of bed and went into the dressing-room. Someone had laid my dressing-gown on the narrow bed. I looked out of the window. The cloudless sky was a paler blue than I’d imagined but as I looked I thought I saw the colour changing to a deeper blue. At noon I knew it would be gold, then brassy in the heat. Now it was fresh and cool and the air itself was blue. At last I turned away from the light and space and went back into the bedroom, which was still in half dark. Antoinette was leaning back against the pillows with her eyes closed. She opened them and smiled when I came in. It was the black woman hovering over her who said, ‘Taste my bull’s blood, master.’ The coffee she handed me was delicious and she had long-fingered hands, thin and beautiful I suppose.
‘Not horse piss like the English madams drink,’ she said. ‘I know them. Drink drink their yellow horse piss, talk, talk their lying talk.’ Her dress trailed and rustled as she walked to the door. There she turned. ‘I send the girl to clear up the mess you make with the frangipani, it bring cockroach in the house. Take care not to slip on the flowers, young master.’ She slid through the door.
‘Her coffee is delicious but her language is horrible and she might hold her dress up. It must get very dirty, yards of it trailing on the floor.’
‘When they don’t hold their dress up it’s for respect,’ said Antoinette. ‘Or for feast days or going to Mass.’
‘And is this feast day?’
‘She wanted it to be a feast day.’
‘Whatever the reason it is not a clean habit.’
‘It is. You don’t understand at all. They don’t care about getting a dress dirty because it shows it isn’t the only dress they have. Don’t you like Christophine?’
‘She is a very worthy person no doubt. I can’t say I like her language.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ said Antoinette.
‘And she looks so lazy. She dawdles about.’
‘Again you are mistaken. She seems slow, but every move she makes is right so it’s quick in the end.’
I drank another cup of bull’s blood. (Bull’s blood, I thought. The Young Bull.)
‘How did you get that dressing table up here?’
‘I don’t know. It’s always been here ever since I can remember. A lot of the furniture was stolen, but not that.’
There were two pink roses on the tray, each in a small brown jug. One was full blown and as I touched it the petals dropped.
‘Rose elle a vécu,’ I said and laughed. ‘Is that poem true? Have all beautiful things sad destinies?’
‘No, of course not.’
Her little fan was on the table, she took it up laughing, lay back and shut her eyes. ‘I think I won’t get up this morning.’
‘Not get up. Not get up at all?’
‘I’ll get up when I wish to. I’m very lazy you know. Like Christophine. I often