Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [39]
One of the candles flared up and I saw the hollows under her eyes, her drooping mouth her thin, strained face.
‘We won’t talk about it now,’ I said. ‘Rest tonight.’
‘But we must talk about it.’ Her voice was high and shrill.
‘Only if you promise to be reasonable.’
But this is not the place or the time, I thought, not in this long dark veranda with the candles burning low and the watching, listening night outside. ‘Not tonight,’ I said again. ‘Some other time.’
‘I might never be able to tell you in any other place or at any other time. No other time, now. You frightened?’ she said, imitating a negro’s voice, singing and insolent.
Then I saw her shiver and remembered that she had been wearing a yellow silk shawl. I got up (my brain so clear and cold, my body so weighted and heavy). The shawl was on a chair in the next room, there were candles on the sideboard and I brought them on to the veranda, lit two, and put the shawl around her shoulders. ‘But why not tell me tomorrow, in the daylight?’
‘You have no right,’ she said fiercely. ‘You have no right to ask questions about my mother and then refuse to listen to my answer.’
‘Of course I will listen, of course we can talk now, if that’s what you wish.’ But the feeling of something unknown and hostile was very strong. ‘I feel very much a stranger here,’ I said. ‘I feel that this place is my enemy and on your side.’
‘You are quite mistaken,’ she said. ‘It is not for you and not for me. It has nothing to do with either of us. That is why you are afraid of it, because it is something else. I found that out long ago when I was a child. I loved it because I had nothing else to love, but it is as indifferent as this God you call on so often.’
‘We can talk here or anywhere else,’ I said, ‘just as you wish.’
The decanter of rum was nearly empty so I went back into the dining-room, and brought out another bottle of rum. She has eaten nothing and refused wine, now she poured herself a drink, touched it with her lips then put it down again.
‘You want to know about my mother, I will tell you about her, the truth, not lies.’ Then she was silent for so long that I said gently, ‘I know that after your father died, she was very lonely and unhappy.’
‘And very poor,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget that. For five years. Isn’t quick to say. And isn’t it long to live. And lonely. She was so lonely that she grew away from other people. That happens. I happened to me too but it was easier for me because I hardly remembered anything else. For her it was strange and frightening. And then she was so lovely. I used to think that every time she looked in the glass she must have hoped and pretended. I pretended too. Different things of course. You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We were alone in the most beautiful place in the world, it is not possible that there can be anywhere else so beautiful as Coulibri. The sea was not far off but we never heard it, we always heard the river. No sea. It was an old-time house and once there was an avenue of royal palms but a lot of they had fallen and others had been cut down and the ones that were left looked lost. Lost trees. Then they poisoned her horse and she could not ride about any more. She worked in the garden even when the sun was very hot and they’d say “You go in now, mistress”.’
‘And who were they?’
‘Christophine was with us, and Godfrey the old gardener stayed, and a boy, I forgot his name. Oh yes,’ she laughed. ‘His name was Disastrous because his godmother thought it such a pretty word. The parson said, “I cannot christen this child Disastrous, he must have another name,” so his name was Disastrous Thomas, we called him Sass. It was Christophine who bought our food from the village and persuaded some girls to helps her sweep and was clothes. We would have died, my mother always said, if she had not stayed with us. Many dies in those days, both white and black, especially the older people, but no one speaks of those days now. They