Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [49]
I shook my head and went on asking it mechanically.
‘It’s lies all that yellow bastard tell you. He is not Cosway either. His mother was a no-good woman and she try to fool the old man but the old man isn’t fooled. “One more or less” he says, and laughs. He was wrong. More he do for those people, more they hate him. The hate in that man Daniel – he can’t rest with it. If I know you coming here I stop you. But you marry quick, you leave Jamaica quick. No time.’
‘She told me that all he said was true. She wasn’t lying then.’
‘Because you hurt her she want to hurt you back, that’s why.’
‘And that her mother was mad. Another lie?’
Christophine did not answer me at once. When she did her voice was not so calm.
‘They drive her to it. When she lose her son she lose herself for a while and they shut her away. They tell her she is mad, they act like she is mad. Question, question. But no kind word, no friends, and her husban’ he go off, he leave her. They won’t let me see her. I try, but no. They won’t let Antoinette see her. In the end – mad I don’t know – she give up, she care for nothing. That man who is in charge of her he take her whenever he want and his woman talk. That man, and others. Then they have her. Ah there is no God.’
‘Only your spirits,’ I reminded her.
‘Only my spirits,’ she said steadily. ‘In your Bible it say God is a spirit – it don’t say no others. Not at all. It give me what happen to her mother, and I can’t see it happen again. You call her a doll? She don’t satisfy you? Try her once more, I think she satisfy you now. If you forsake her they will tear her in pieces – like they did her mother.’
‘I will not forsake her,’ I said wearily. ‘I will do all I can for her.’
‘You will love her like you did before?’
(Give my sister your wife a kiss from me. Love her as I did – oh yes I did. How can I promise that?) I said nothing.
‘It’s she won’t be satisfy. She is Creole girl, and she have the sun in her. Tell the truth now. She don’t come to your house in this place England they tell me about, she don’t come to your beautiful house to beg you to marry with her. No, it’s you come all the long way to her house – it’s you beg her to marry. And she love you and she give you all she have. Now you say you don’t love her and you break her up. What you do with her money, eh?’ Her voice was still quiet but with a hiss in it when she said ‘money’. I thought, of course, that is what all the rigmarole is about. I no longer felt dazed, tired, half hypnotized, but alert and wary, ready to defend myself.
Why, she wanted to know, could I not return half of Antoinette’s dowry and leave the island – ‘leave the West Indies if you don’t want her no more.’
I asked the exact sum she had in mind, but she was vague about that.
‘You fix it up with lawyers and all those things.’
‘And what will happen to her then?’
She, Christophine, would take good care of Antoinette (and the money of course).
‘You will both stay here?’ I hoped that my voice was as smooth as hers.
No, they would go to Martinique. Then to other places.
‘I like to see the world before I die.’
Perhaps because I was so quiet and composed she added maliciously, ‘She marry with someone else. She forget about you and live happy.’
A pang of rage and jealously shot through me then. On no, she won’t forget. I laughed.
‘You laugh at me? Why you laugh at me?’
‘Of course I laugh at you – you ridiculous old woman. I don’t mean to discuss my affairs with you any longer. Or your mistress. I’ve listened to all you had to say and I don’t believe you. Now, say good-bye to Antoinette, then go. You are to blame for all that happened here, so don’t come back.’
She drew herself up tall and straight and put her hand on her hips. ‘Who you tell me to go? This house belong to Miss Antoinette’s mother, now it belongs to her. Who you tell me to go?’
‘I assure you that it belongs to me now. You’ll go, or I’ll get the men to put you out.’
‘You think the men here touch me? They