Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [27]
‘One of our hermit neighbours,’ I thought. ‘And an enclosure for Antoinette.’ Then I saw Baptiste standing near the veranda steps, put the letter in my pocket and forgot it.
I was later than usual that morning but when I was dressed I sat for a long time listening to the waterfall, eyes half closed, drowsy and content. When I put my hand in my pocket for my watch, I touched the envelope and opened it.
Dear Sir. I take up my pen after long thought and meditation but in the end the truth is better than a lie. I have this to say. You have been shamefully deceived by the Mason family. They tell you perhaps that your wife’s name is Cosway, the English gentleman Mr Mason being her stepfather only, but they don’t tell you what sort of people were these Cosways. Wicked and detestable slave-owners since generations – yes everybody hate them in Jamaica and also in this beautiful island where I hope you’re your stay will be long and pleasant in spite of all, for some not worth sorrow. Wickedness is not the worst. There is madness in that family. Old Cosway die raving like his father before him.
You ask what proof I have and why I mix myself up in your affairs. I will answer you. I am your wife’s brother by another lady, half-way house as we say. Her father and mine was a shameless man and of all his illegitimates I am the most unfortunate and poverty stricken.
My momma die when I was quite small and my godmother take care of me. The old mister hand out some money for that though he don’t like me. No, that old devil don’t like me at all, and when I grow older I see it and I think, Let him wait my day will come. Ask the older people sir about his disgusting goings on, some will remember.
When Madam his wife die the reprobate marry again quick, to a young girl from Martinique – it’s too much for him. Dead drunk from morning till night and he die raving and cursing.
Then comes the glorious Emancipation Act and trouble for some of the high and mighties. Nobody would work for the young woman and her two young children and that place Coulibri goes quickly to bush as all does out here when nobody toil and labour on the land. She have no money and she have no friends, for French and English like cat and dog in these islands since long time. Shoot, Kill, Everything.
The woman called Christophine also from Martinique stay with her and an old man Godfrey, too silly to know what happen. Some like that. This young Mrs Cosway is worthless and spoilt, she can’t lift a hand for herself and soon the madness that is in her, and in all these white Creoles, come out. She shuts herself away, laughing and talking to nobody as many can bear witness. As for the little girl, Antoinette, as soon as she can walk she hide herself if she see anybody.
We all wait to hear the woman jump over a precipice ‘fini batt’e’ as we say here which mean ‘finish to fight’.
But no. She marry again to the rich Englishman Mr Mason, and there is much I could say about that but you won’t believe so I shut my mouth. They say he love her so much that if he have the world on a plate he give it to her – but no use.
The madness gets worse and she has to be shut away for she try to kill her husband – madness not being all either.
That sir is your wife’s mother – that was her father. I leave Jamaica. I don’t know what happen to the woman. Some say she is dead, other deny it. But old Mason take a great fancy for the girl Antoinetta and give her half his money when he die.
As for me I wonder high and low, not much luck but a little money put by and I get to know of a house for sale in this island near Massacre. It’s going very cheap so I buy it. News travel even to this wild place and next thing I hear from Jamaica is that old Mason is dead and that family plan to marry the girl to a young Englishman who know nothing of her. Then it seems to me that it is my Christian duty to warn the gentleman that she is no girl to marry with the bad blood she have from both sides. But they are white, I am coloured. They are rich, I am poor. As I think about