Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [6]
‘They’ve chosen a very hot night for their dance,’ Mr Mason said, and Aunt Cora came on to the glacis. ‘What dance? Where?’
‘There is some festivity in the neighbourhood. The huts were abandoned. A wedding perhaps?’
‘Not a wedding,’ I said. ‘There is never a wedding.’ He frowned at me nut Aunt Cora smiled.
When they had gone indoors I leaned my arms on the cool glacis railings and thought that I would never like him very much. I still called him ‘Mr Mason’ in my head. ‘Goodnight white pappy,’ I said one evening and he was not vexed, he laughed. In some ways it was better before he came though he’d rescued us from poverty and misery. ‘Only just in time too.’ The black people did not hate us quite so much when we were poor. We were white but we had not escaped and soon we would be dead for we had no money left. What was there to hate?
Now it had started up again and worse than before, my mother knows but she can’t make him believe it. I wish I could tell him that out here is not at all like English people think it is. I wish …
I could hear them talking and Aunt Cora’s laugh. I was glad she was staying with us. And I could hear the bamboos shiver and creak though there was no wind. It had been hot and still and dry for days. The colours had gone from the sky, the light was blue and could not last long. The glacis was not a good place when night was coming, Christophine said. As I went indoors my mother was talking in an excited voice.
‘Very well. As you refuse to consider it, I will go and take Pierre with me. You won’t object to that, I hope?’
‘You are perfectly right, Annette,’ said Aunt Cora and that did surprise me. She seldom spoke when they argued.
Mr Mason also seemed surprised and not at all pleased.
‘You talk so wildly,’ he said. ‘And you are so mistaken. Of course you can get away for a change if you wish it. I promise you.’
‘You have promised that before,’ she said. ‘You don’t keep your promises.’
He sighed. ‘I feel very well here. However, we’ll arrange something. Quite soon.’
‘I will not stay at Coulibri any longer,’ my mother said. ‘It is not safe. It is not safe for Pierre.’
Aunt Cora nodded.
As it was late I ate with them instead of by myself as usual. Myra, one of the new servants, was standing by the sideboard, waiting to change the plates. We ate English food now, beef and mutton, pies and puddings.
I was glad to be like an English girl but I missed the taste of Christophine’s cooking.
My stepfather talked about a plan to import labourers – coolies he called them – from the East Indies. When Myra had gone out Aunt Cora said, ‘I shouldn’t discuss that if I were you. Myra is listening.’
‘But the people here won’t work. They don’t want to work. Look at this place – it’s enough to break your heart.’
‘Hearts have been broken,’ she said. ‘Be sure of that. I suppose you all know what you are doing.’
‘Do you mean to say – ’
‘I said nothing, except that it would be wiser not to tell that woman your plans – necessary and merciful no doubt. I don’t trust her.’
‘Live here most of your life and know nothing about the people. It’s astonishing. They are children – they wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘Unhappily children do hurt flies,’ said Aunt Cora.
Myra came in again looking mournful as she always did though she smiled when she talked about hell. Everyone went to hell, she told me, you had to belong to her sect to be saved and even then – just as well not to be sure. She had thin arms and big hands and feet and the handkerchief she wore round her head was always white. Never striped or a gay colour.
So I looked away from her at my favourite picture, ‘The Miller’s Daughter’, a lovely English girl with brown curls and blue eyes and a dress slipping off her shoulders. Then I looked across the white tablecloth and the vase of yellow roses at Mr Mason, so sure of himself, so without a doubt