Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [32]
Pink and red hibiscus grew in front of her door, she lit her pipe and did not answer.
‘Answer me,’ I said. She puffed out a cloud of smoke.
‘You ask me a hard thing, I tell you a hard thing, pack up and go.’
‘Go, go where? To some strange place where I shall never see him? No, I will not, then everyone, not only the servants, will laugh at me.’
‘It’s not you they laugh at if you go, they laugh at him.’
‘I will not do that.’
‘Why you ask me, if when I answer you say no? Why you come up here if when I tell you the truth, you say no?’
‘But there must be something else I can do.’
She looked gloomy. ‘When man don’t love you, more you try, more he hate you, man like that. If you love them they treat you bad, if you don’t love them they after you night and day bothering your soul case out. I hear about you and your husband.’ she said.
‘But I cannot go. He is my husband after all.’
She spat over her shoulder. ‘All women, all colours, nothing but fools. Three children I have. One living in this world, each one a different father, but no husband, I thank my God. I keep my money. I don’t give it to no worthless man.’
‘When must I go, where must I go?’
‘But look me trouble, a rich white girl like you and more foolish than the rest. A man don’t treat you good, pick up your skirt and walk out. Do it and he come after you.’
‘He will not come after me. And you must understand I am not rich now, I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him.’
‘What you tell me there?’ she said sharply.
‘That is English law.’
‘Law! The Mason boy fix it, that boy worse than Satan and he burn in Hell one of these fine nights. Listen to me now and I advise you what to do. Tell your husband you feeling sick, you want to visit your cousin in Martinique. Ask him pretty for some of your own money, the man not bad-hearted, he give it. When you get away, stay away. Ask more. He give again and well satisfy. In the end he come to find out what you do, how you get on without him, and if he see you fat and happy he want you back. Men like that. Better not stay in that old house. Go from that house, I tell you.’
‘You think I must leave him?’
‘You ask me so I answer.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘After all I could, but why should I go to Martinique? I wish to see England, I might be able to borrow money for that. Not from him but I know how I might get it. I must travel far, if I go.’
I have been too unhappy, I thought, it cannot last, being so unhappy, it would kill you. I will be a different person when I live in England and different things will happen to me … England, rosy pink in the geography book map, but on the page opposite the words are closely crowded, heavy looking. Exports, coal, iron, wool. Then Imports and Character of Inhabitants. Names, Essex, Chelmsford on the Chelmer. The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire wolds. Wolds? Does that mean hills? How high? Half the height of ours, or not even that? Cool green leaves in the short cool summer. Summer. There are fields of corn like sugar-cane fields, but gold colour and not so tall. After summer the trees are bare, then winter and snow. White feathers falling? Torn pieces of paper falling? They say frost makes flower patterns on the window panes. I must know more than I know already. For I know that house where I will be cold and not belonging, the bed I shall lie in has red curtains and I have slept there many times before, long ago. How long ago? In that bed I will dream the end of my dream. But my dream had nothing to do with England and I must not think like this, I must remember about chandeliers and dancing, about swans and roses and snow. And snow.
‘England,’ said Christophine, who was watching me. ‘You think there is such a place?’
‘How can you ask that? You know there is.’
‘I never see the damn place, how I know?’
‘You do not believe that there is a country called England?