Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [57]
Mrs Poole said, ‘It’s no use running around and looking now. He’s gone and he won’t come back – nor would I in his place.’
I said, ‘I can’t remember what happened. I can’t remember.’
‘When he came in,’ said Grace Poole, ‘he didn’t recognize you.’
‘Will you light the fire,’ I said, ‘because I’m so cold.’
‘This gentleman arrived suddenly and insisted on seeing you and that was all the thanks he got. You rushed at him with a knife and when he got the knife away you bit his arm. You won’t see him again. And where did you get that knife? I told them you stole it from me but I’m much too careful. I’m used to your sort. You got no knife from me. You must have bought it that day when I took you out. I told Mrs Eff you ought to be taken out.’
‘When we went to England,’ I said.
‘You fool,’ she said, ‘this is England.’
‘I don’t believe it.’ I said, ‘and I never will believe it.’
(That afternoon we went to England. There was grass and olive-green water and tall trees looking into the water. This, I thought, is England. If I could be there could be well again and the sound in my head would stop. Let me stay a little longer, I said, and she sat down under a tree and went to sleep. A little way off there was a cart and horse – a woman was driving it. It was she who sold me the knife. I gave her the locket round my neck for it.)
Grace Poole said, ‘So you don’t remember that you attacked this gentleman with a knife? I said that you would be quiet. “I must speak to her,” he said. Oh he was warned but he wouldn’t listen. I was in the room but I didn’t hear all he said except “I cannot interfere legally between yourself and your husband”. It was when he said “legally” that you flew at him and when he twisted the knife out of your hand you bit him. Do you mean to say that you don’t remember any of this?’
I remember now that he did not recognize me. I saw him look at me and his eyes went first to one corner and then to another, not finding what they expected. He looked at me and spoke to me as though I were a stranger. What do you do when something happens to you like that? Why are you laughing at me? ‘Have you hidden my red dress too? If I’d been wearing that he’d have known me.’
‘Nobody’s hidden your dress,’ she said. ‘It’s hanging in the press.’
She looked at me and said, ‘I don’t believe you know how long you’ve been here, you poor creature.’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘only I know how long I have been here. Night and days and days and nights, hundreds of them slipping through my fingers. But that does not matter. Time has no meaning. But something you can touch and hold like my red dress, that has a meaning. Where is it?’
She jerked her head towards the press and the corners of her mouth turned down. As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the colour of fire and sunset. The colour of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree,’ I said, ‘your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’
She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.
The scent that came from the dress was very faint at first, then it grew stronger. The smell of vetivert and frangipanni, of cinnamon and dust and lime trees when they are flowering. The smell of the sun and the smell of the rain.
… I was wearing a dress of that colour when Sandi came to see me for the last time.
‘Will you come with me?’ he said. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I cannot.’
‘So this is good-bye?’
Yes, this is good-bye.
‘But I can’t leave you like this,’ he said, ‘you are unhappy.’
‘You are wasting time,’ I said, ‘and we have so little.’
Sandi often came to see me when the man was away and when I went out driving I would meet him. I could go out driving then. The servants knew, but none of them told.
Now there was not time left so we kissed each other in that stupid room. Spread fans decorated the walls. We had often kissed before but not like that. That was the life and death kiss and you only know a long time after wards what it is, the life and death kiss. The white ship