Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [56]
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘only I know how long I have been here. Night and days and days and nights, hundreds of them slipping through my fingers. But that does not matter. Time has no meaning. But something you can touch and hold like my red dress, that has a meaning. Where is it?’
She jerked her head towards the press and the corners of her mouth turned down. As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the colour of fire and sunset. The colour of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree,’ I said, ‘your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’
She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.
The scent that came from the dress was very faint at first, then it grew stronger. The smell of vetivert and frangipanni, of cinnamon and dust and lime trees when they are flowering. The smell of the sun and the smell of the rain.
… I was wearing a dress of that colour when Sandi came to see me for the last time.
‘Will you come with me?’ he said. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I cannot.’
‘So this is good-bye?’
Yes, this is good-bye.
‘But I can’t leave you like this,’ he said, ‘you are unhappy.’
‘You are wasting time,’ I said, ‘and we have so little.’
Sandi often came to see me when the man was away and when I went out driving I would meet him. I could go out driving then. The servants knew, but none of them told.
Now there was not time left so we kissed each other in that stupid room. Spread fans decorated the walls. We had often kissed before but not like that. That was the life and death kiss and you only know a long time after wards what it is, the life and death kiss. The white ship whistled three times, once gaily, once calling, once to say good-bye.
I took the red dress down and put it against myself. ‘Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?’ I said. That man told me so. He had found out that Sandi had been to the house and that I went to see him. I never knew who told. ‘Infamous daughter of an infamous mother,’ he said to me.
‘Oh put it away,’ Grace Poole said, ‘come and eat your food. Here’s your grey wrapper. Why they can’t give you anything better is more than I can understand. They’re rich enough
But I held the dress in my hand wondering if they had done the last and worst thing. If they had changed it when I wasn’t looking. If they had changed it and it wasn’t my dress at all – but how could they get the scent?
‘Well don’t stand there shivering,’ she said, quite kindly for her.
I let the dress fall on the floor, and looked from the fire to the dress and from the dress to the fire.
I put the grey wrapper round my shoulders, but I told her I wasn’t hungry and she didn’t try to force me to eat as she sometimes does.
‘It’s just as well that you don’t remember last night,’ she said. ‘The gentleman fainted and a fine outcry there was up here. Blood all over the place and I was blamed for letting you attack him. And the master is expected in a few days. I’ll never try to help you again. You are too far gone to be helped.’
I said, ‘If I had been wearing my red dress Richard would have known me.’
‘Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed.
But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.
That was the third time I had my dream, and it ended. I know now that the flight of steps leads to this room where I lie watching the woman asleep with her head on her arms. In my dream I waited till she began to snore, then I got up, took the keys and left myself out with a candle in my hand. It was easier this time than ever before and I walked as though I were flying.
All the people who had been staying in the house had gone, for the bedroom doors were shut, but it seemed to me that someone was following me, someone was chasing me, laughing. Sometimes I looked to the right or to the left but I never looked behind me for I did not want to see that ghost of a woman whom they say haunts this place. I went down the staircase. I went further than I had ever been before. There was someone talking in one of the rooms. I passed it without noise, slowly.