Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [48]
‘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 not damn fool like you to put their hand on me.’
‘Then I will have the police up, I warn you. There must be some law and order even in this God-forsaken island.’
‘No police here,’ she said. ‘No chain gang, no tread machine, no dark jail either. This is free country and I am free woman.’
‘Christophine,’ I said, ‘you lived in Jamaica for years, and you know Mr Fraser, the Spanish Town magistrate, well. I wrote to him about you. Would you like to hear what he answered?’ She stared at me. I read the end of Fraser’s letter aloud: ‘I have written very discreetly to Hill, the white inspector of police in your town. If she lives near you and gets up to any of her nonsense let him know at once. He’ll send a couple of policemen up to your place and she won’t get off lightly this time…. You gave your mistress the poison that she put into my wine?’
‘I tell you already – you talk foolishness.’
‘We’ll see about that – I kept some of that wine.’
‘I tell her so,’ she said. ‘Always it don’t work for béké. Always it bring trouble … So you send me away and you keep all her money. And what you do with her?’
‘I don’t see why I should tell you my plans. I mean to go back to Jamaica to consult the Spanish Town doctors and her brother. I’ll follow their advice. That is all I mean to do. She is not well.’
‘Her brother!’ She spat on the floor. ‘Richard Mason is no brother to her. You think you fool me? You want her money but you don