Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [49]
I said loudly and wildly, ‘And you think that I wanted all this? I would give my life to undo it. I would give my eyes never to have seen this abominable place.’
She laughed. ‘And that’s the first damn word of truth you speak. You choose what you give, eh? Then you choose. You meddle in something and perhaps you don’t know what it is.’ She began to mutter to herself. Not in patois. I knew the sound of patois now.
She’s as mad as the other, I thought, and turned to the window.
The servants were standing in a group under the clove tree. Baptiste, the boy who helped with the horses and the little girl Hilda.
Christophine was right. They didn’t intend to get mixed up in this business.
When I looked at her there was a mask on her face and her eyes were undaunted. She was a fighter, I had to admit. Against my will I repeated, ‘Do you wish to say good-bye to Antoinette?’
‘I give her something to sleep – nothing to hurt her. I don’t wake her up to no misery. I leave that for you.’
‘You can write to her,’ I said stiffly.
‘Red and write I don’t know. Other things I know.’
She walked away without looking back.
All wish to sleep left me. I walked up and down the room and felt the blood tingle in my finger-tips. It ran up my arms and reached my heart, which began to beat very fast. I spoke aloud as I walked. I spoke the letter I meant to write.
‘I know now that you planned this because you wanted to be rid of me. You had no love at all for me. Nor had my brother. Your plan succeeded because I was young, conceited, foolish, trusting. Above all because I was young. You were able to do this to me …’
But I am not young now, I thought, stopped pacing and drank. Indeed this rum is mild as mother’s milk or father’s blessing.
I could imagine his expression if I sent that letter and he read it.
‘Dear Father,’ I wrote. ‘We are leaving this island for Jamaica very shortly. Unforeseen circumstances, at least unforeseen by me, have forced me to make this decision. I am certain that you know or can guess what has happened, and I am certain you will believe that the less you talk to anyone about my affairs, especially my marriage, the better. This is in your interest as well as mine. You will hear from me again. Soon I hope.’
Then I wrote to the firm of lawyers I had dealt with in Spanish Town. I told them that I wished to rent a furnished house not too near the town, commodious enough to allow for two separate suites of rooms. I also told them to engage a staff of servants whom I was prepared to pay very liberally – so long as they keep their mouths shut, I thought – provided that they are discreet, I wrote. My wife and myself would be in Jamaica in about a week and expected to find everything ready.
All the time I was writing this letter a cock crowed persistently outside. I took the first book I could lay hands on and threw it at him, but he staled a few yards away and started again.
Baptiste appeared, looking toward Antoinette’s silent room.
‘Have you got much more of this famous rum?’
‘Plenty rum,’ he said.
‘Is it really a hundred years old?’
He nodded indifferently. A hundred years, a thousand all the same to le bon Dieu and Baptiste too.
‘What’s that damn cock crowing about?’
‘Crowing for change of weather.’
Because his eyes were fixed on the bedroom I shouted at him, ‘Asleep, dormi, dormi.’
He shook his head and went away.
He scowled at me then, I thought. I scowled too as I re-read the letter I had written to the lawyers. However much I paid Jamaican servants I would never buy discretion. I’d be gossiped about, sung about (but they make up songs about everything, everybody. You should hear the one about the Governor’s wife). Wherever I went I would be talked about. I drank some more rum and, drinking, I drew a house surrounded by trees. A large house. I divided the third floor into rooms and in one room I drew a standing woman