Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [3]
They were very beautiful I though and they wore such beautiful clothes that I looked away down at the flagstones and when they laughed – the gentleman laughed the loudest – I ran into the house, into my bedroom. There I stood with my back against the door and I could feel my heart all through me. I heard them talking and I heard them leave. I came out of my room and my mother was sitting on the blue sofa. She looked at me for some time before she said that I had behaved very oddly. My dress was even dirtier than usual.
‘It’s Tia’s dress.’
‘But why are you wearing Tia’s dress? Tia? Which one of them is Tia?’
Christophine, who had been in the pantry listening, came at once and was told to find a clean dress for me. ‘Throw away that thing. Burn it.’
Then they quarrelled.
Christophine said I had no clean dress. ‘She got two dresses, wash and wear. You want clean dress to drop from heaven? Some people crazy in truth.’
‘She must have another dress,’ said my mother. ‘Somewhere.’ But Christophine told her loudly that it shameful. She run wild, she grow up worthless. And nobody care.
My mother walked over to the window. (Marooned,’ said her straight narrow back, her carefully coiled hair. ‘Marooned.’)
‘She has an old muslin dress. Find that.’
While Christophine scrubbed my face and tied my plaits with a fresh piece of string, she told me that those were the new people at Nelson’s Rest. They called themselves Luttrell, but English or not English they were not like old Mr Luttrell. Old Mr Luttrell spit in their face if he see how they look at you. Trouble walk into the house this day. Trouble walk in.’
The old muslin dress was found and it tore as I forced it on. She didn’t notice.
No more slavery! She had to laugh! ‘These new ones have Letter of the Law. Same thing. They got magistrate. They got fine. They got jail house and chain gang. They got tread machine to mash up people’s feet. New ones worse that old ones – more cunning, that’s all.’
All that evening my mother didn’t speak to me or look at me and I thought, ‘She is ashamed of me, what Tia said is true.’
I went to bed early and slept at once. I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy footsteps coming closer and though I struggled and screamed I could not move. I woke crying. The covering sheet was on the floor and my mother was looking down at me.
‘Did you have a nightmare?’
‘Yes, a bad dream.’
She sighed and covered me up. ‘You were making such a noise. I must go to Pierre, you’ve frightened him.’
I lay thinking, ‘I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly furniture. There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains. And the barrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from strangers.’
The light of the candle in Pierre’s room was still there when I slept again. I woke next morning knowing that nothing would be the same. I would change and go on changing.
I don’t know how she got money to buy the white muslin and the pink. Yards of muslin. She may have sold her last ring, for there was one left. I saw it in her jewel box – that, and a locket with a shamrock inside. They were mending and sewing first thing in the morning and still sewing when I went to bed. In a week she had a new dress and so had I.
The Luttrells lent her a horse, and she would ride off very early and not come back till late next day – tired out because she had been to a dance or a moonlight picnic. She was gay and laughing – younger that I had ever seen her and the house was sad when she had gone.
So I too left it and stayed away till dark. I was never long at the bathing pool,