Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [8]
‘Tomorrow will be too late,’ said Aunt Cora, ‘too late for ginger sweets or anything else.’ My mother was not listening to either of them. She said, ‘Pierre is asleep and Myra is with him, I thought it better to leave him in his own room, away from this horrible noise. I don’t know. Perhaps.’ She was twisting her hands together, her wedding ring fell off and rolled into a corner near the steps. My stepfather and Mannie both stooped for it, then Mannie straightened up and said, ‘Oh, my God, they get at the back, they set fire to the back of the house.’ He pointed to my bedroom which I had shut after me, and smoke was rolling out from underneath
I did no see my mother move she was so quick. She opened the door of my room and then again I did not see her, nothing but smoke. Mannie ran after her, so did Mr Mason but more slowly. Aunt Cora put her arms round me. She said, ‘Don’t be afraid, you are quite safe. We are all quite safe.’ Just for a moment I shut my eyes and rested my head against her shoulder. She smelled of vanilla, I remember. Then there was another smell, of burned hair, and I looked and my mother was in the room carrying Pierre. It was her loose hair that had burned and was smelling like that.
I thought, Pierre is dead. He looked dead. He was white and he did not make a sound, but his head hung back over her arm as if he had no life at all and his eyes were rolled up so that you only saw the whites. My stepfather said, ‘Annette, you are hurt – your hands …’ But she did not even look at him. ‘His crib was on fire,’ she said to Aunt Cora. ‘The little room is on fire and Myra was not there. She has gone. She was not there.’
‘That does not surprise me at all,’ said Aunt Cora. She laid Pierre on the sofa, bent over him, then lifted up her skirt, stepped out of her white petticoat and began to tear it into strips.
‘She left him, she ran away and left him alone to die,’ said my mother, still whispering. So it was all the more dreadful when she began to scream abuse at Mr Mason, calling him a fool, a cruel stupid fool. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘I told you what would happened again and again,’ Her voice broke, but still she screamed, ‘You would not listen, you sneered at me, you grinning hypocrite, you ought not to live either, you know so much, don’t you? Why don’t you go out and ask them to let you go? Say how innocent you are. Say you have always trusted them.’
I was so shocked that everything was confused. And it happened quickly. I saw Mannie and Sass staggering along with two large earthenware jars of water into the bedroom and it made a black pool on the floor, but the smoke rolled over the pool. Then Christophine, who had run into my mother’s bedroom for the pitcher there, came back and spoke to my aunt. ‘It seems they have fired the other side of the house,’ said Aunt Cora. ‘They must have climbed that tree outside. This place is going to burn like tinder and there is nothing we can do to stop it. The sooner we get out the better.’
Mannie said to the boy, ‘You frightened?’ Sass shook his head. ‘Then come on,’ said Minnie. ‘Out of my way,’ he said and pushed Mr Mason aside. Narrow wooden stairs led down from the pantry to the outbuildings, the kitchen, the servants’ room, the stables. That was where they were going. ‘Take the child,’ Aunt Cora told Christophine, ‘and come.’
It was very hot on the glacis too, they roared as we came out, then there was another roar behind us. I had not seen any flames, only smoke and sparks, but now I saw tall flames shooting up to the sky, for the bamboos had caught. There were some tree ferns near, green and damp, one of those was smouldering too.
‘Come quickly,’ said Aunt Cora, and she went first, holding my hand. Christophine followed, carrying Pierre, and they were quite silent as we went down the glacis steps. But then I looked round for my mother I saw that Mr Mason, his face crimson with heat, seemed to be dragging her along and she