Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [41]
‘ “If she walk in it a damn good thing,” the woman said. “Perhaps she keep quiet then.” However she brought a pan and brush and swept the broken glass. All this I saw. My mother did not look at them. She walked up and down and said, “But this is a very pleasant surprise, Mr Luttrell. Godfrey, take Mr Luttrell’s horse.” Then she seemed to grow tired and sat down in the rocking-chair. I saw the man lift her up out of the chair and kiss her. I saw his mouth fasten on hers and she went all soft and limp in his arms and he laughed. The woman laughed too, but she was angry. When I saw that I ran away. Christophine was waiting for me when I came back crying. “What you want to go up there for?” she said, and I said, “You shut up devil, damned black devil from Hell.” Christophine said, “Aie Aie Aie! Look me trouble, look me cross” ’
After a long time I heard her say as if she were talking to herself, ‘I have said all I want to say. I have tried to make you understand. But nothing has changed.’ She laughed.
‘Don’t laugh like that, Bertha.’
‘My name is not Bertha; why do you call me Bertha?’
‘Because it is a name I’m particularly fond of. I think of you as Bertha.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
I said, ‘When you went off this morning where did you do?’
‘I went to see Christophine,’ she said. ‘I will tell you anything you wish to know, but in a few words because words are no use, I know that now.’
‘Why did you go to see her?’
‘I went to ask her to do something for me.’
‘And did she do it?’
‘Yes.’ Another long pause.
‘You wanted to ask her advice, was that it?’
She did not answer.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that I ought to go away – to leave you.’
‘Oh did she?’ I said, surprised.
‘Yes, that was her advice.’
‘I want to do the best for both of us,’ I said. ‘So much of what you tell me is strange, different from what I was led to expect. Don’t you feel that perhaps Christophine is right? That if you went away from this place or I went away – exactly as you wish of course – for a time, it might be the wisest thing we could do?’ Then I said sharply, ‘Bertha, are you asleep, are you ill, why don’t you answer me?’ I got up, went over to her chair and took her cold hands in mine. ‘We’ve been sitting here long enough, it is very late.’
‘You go,’ she said. ‘I wish to stay here in the dark … where I belong,’ she added.
‘Oh nonsense,’ I said. I put arms round her to help her up, I kissed her, but she drew away.
‘Your mouth is colder than my hands,’ she said. I tried to laugh. In the bedroom, I closed the shutters. ‘Sleep now, we will talk things over tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course, but will you come in and say goodnight to me?
‘Certainly I will, my dear Bertha.’
‘Not Bertha tonight,’ she said.
‘Of course, on this of all nights, you must be Bertha.’
‘As you wish,’ she said.
As I stepped into her room I noticed the white power strewn on the floor. That was the first thing I asked her – about the power. I asked what it was. She said it was to keep cockroaches away.
‘Haven’t you noticed that there are no cockroaches in this house and no centipedes. If you knew how horrible these things can be.’ She had lit all the candles and the room was full of shadows. There were six on the dressing-table and three on the table near the bed. The light changed her. I had never seen her look so gay or so beautiful. She poured wine into two glasses and handed me one but I swear it was before I drank that I longed to bury my face in her hair as I used to do. I said, ‘We are letting ghosts trouble us. Why shouldn’t we be happy?’ She said, ‘Christophine knows about ghosts too, but that is not what she calls them.’ She need not have done what she did to me. I will always swear that, she need not have done