Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [12]
‘I’ll talk to that boy,’ he said. ‘He won’t bother you again.’
In the distance I could see my enemy’s red hair as he pelted along, but he hadn’t a chance. Sandi caught him up before he reached the corner. The girl had disappeared. I didn’t wait to see what happened but I pulled and pulled at the bell.
At last the door opened. The nun was a coloured woman and she seemed displeased. ‘You must not ring the bell like that,’ she said. ‘I come as quick as I can.’ Then I heard the door shut behind me.
I collapsed ad began to cry. She asked me if I was sick, but I could not answer. She took my hand, still clicking her tongue and muttering in an ill-tempered was, and led me across the yard, past the shadow of the big tree, not into the front door but into a big, cool, stone-flagged room. There were pots and pans hanging on the wall and a stone fireplace. There was another nun at the back of the room and when the bell rang again, the first one went to answer it. The second nun, also a coloured woman, brought a basin and water but as fast as she sponged my face, so fast did I cry. When she saw my hand she asked if I had fallen and hurt myself. I shook my head and she sponged the stain away gently. ‘What is the matter, what are you crying about? What has happened to you?’ And still I could not answer. She brought me a glass of milk, I tried to drink it, but I choked. ‘Oh la la,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders and went out.
When she came in again, a third nun was with her who said in a calm voice, ‘You have cried quite enough now, you must stop. Have you got a handkerchief?’
I remembered that I had dropped it. The new nun wiped my eyes with a large handkerchief, gave it to me and asked my name.
‘Antoinette,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I know. You are Antoinette Cosway, that is to say Antoinette Mason. Has someone frightened you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now look at me,’ she said. ‘You will not be frightened of me.’
I looked at her. She had large brown eyes, very soft, and was dressed in white, not with a starched apron like the others had. The band round her face was of linen and above the white linen a black veil of some thin material, which fell on folds down her back. He cheeks were red, she had a laughing face and two deep dimples. Her hands were small but they looked clumsy and swollen, not like the rest of her. It was only afterwards that I found out that they were crippled with rheumatism. She took me into a parlour furnished stiffly with straight-backed chairs and a polished table in the middle. After she had talked to me I told her a little of why I was crying and that I did not like walking to school alone.
‘That must be seen to,’ she said. ‘I will write to your aunt. Now Mother St Justine will be waiting for you. I have sent for a girl who has been with us for nearly a year. Her name is Louise – Louise de Plana. If you feel strange, she will explain everything.’
Louise and I walked along a paved path to the classroom. There was grass on each side of the path and trees and shadows of trees and sometimes a bright bush of flowers. She was very pretty and when she smiled at me I could scarcely believe I had ever been miserable. She said, ‘We always call Mother St Justine, Mother Juice of a Lime. She is not very intelligent, poor woman. You will see.
Quickly, while I can, I must remember to hot classroom. The hot classroom, the pitchpine desks, the heat of the bench striking up through my body, along my arms and hands. But outside I could see cool, blue shadow on a white wall. My needle is sticky, and creaks as it goes in and out of the canvas. ‘My needle is swearing,’ I whispered to Louise, who sits next to me. We are cross-stitching silk roses on a pale background. We can colour the roses as we choose and mine are green, blue and purple. Underneath, I will write my name in fire red, Antoinette Mason, née Cosway, Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1839.
As we work, Mother St Justine read us stories from the lives of the Saints, St Rose, St Barbara, St Agnes. But we have our own Saint, the skeleton of a girl of fourteen under the altar of the convent chapel. The Relics. But how did the nuns get them out here, I ask myself? In a cabin trunk? Specially packed for the hold? How? But here she is, and St Innocenzia is her name. We do not know her story, she is not in the book. The saints we hear about were all very beautiful and wealthy. All were loved by rich and handsome young me.