Wide Sargasso Sea, Apuntes de Literatura inglesa

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WIDE SARGASSO SEA

By Jean Rhys First published in 1966 Part One They say when trouble come close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said. She was my father’s second wife, far too young for him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl. When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where we lived was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past. (My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed – all belonged to the past.) Another day I heard her talking to Mr Luttrell, our neighbour and her only friend. ‘Of course they have their own misfortunes. Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was passed. Some will wait for a long time.’ How could she know that Mr Luttrell would be the first who grew tired of waiting? One calm evening he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always. No agent came from England to look after his property – Nelson’s Rest it was called – and strangers from Spanish Town rode up to gossip and discuss the tragedy. ‘Live at Nelson’s Rest? Not for love or money. An unlucky place.’ Mr Luttrell’s ho was left empty, shutters banging in the wind. Soon the black people said it was haunted, they wouldn’t go near it. And no one came near us. I got used to a solitary life, but my mother still planned and hoped – perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass. She still rode about every morning not caring that the black people stood about in groups to jeer at her, especially after her riding clothes grew shabby (they notice clothes, they know about money). Then, one day, very early I saw her horse lying down under the frangipani tree. I went up to him but he was not sick, he was dead and his eyes were black with flies. I ran away and did not speak of it for I thought if I told no one it might not be true. But later that day, Godfrey found him, he had been poisoned. ‘Now we are marooned,’ my mother said, ‘now what will become of us?’

the one about the cedar tree flowers which only last for a day. The music was gay but the words were sad and her voice often quavered and broke on the high note. ‘Adieu.’ Not adieu as we said it, but à dieu, which made more sense after all. The loving man was lonely, the girl was deserted, the children never came back. Adieu Her songs were not like Jamaican songs, and she was not like the other women. She was much blacker – blue-black with a thin face and straight features. She wore a black dress, heavy gold ear-rings and a yellow handkerchief – carefully tied with the two high points in front. No other negro woman wore black, or tied her handkerchief Martinique fashion. She had a quiet voice and a quiet laugh when she did laugh), and though she could speak good English if she wanted to, and French as well as patois, she took care to talk as they talked. But they would have nothing to do with her and she never saw her son who worked in Spanish Town. She had only one friend – a woman called Maillotte, and Maillotte was not a Jamaican. The girls from the bayside who sometimes helped with the washing and cleaning were terrified of her. That, I soon discovered, was why they came at all – for she never paid them. Yet they brought presents of fruit and vegetables and after dark I often heard low voices from the kitchen. So I asked about Christophine. Was she very old? Had she always been with us? ‘She was your father’s wedding present to me – one of his presents. He though I would be pleased with a Martinique girl. I don’t know how old she was when they brought her to Jamaica, quite young. I don’t know how old she is now. Does it matter? Why do you pester and bother me about all these things that happened long ago? Christophine stayed with me because she wanted to stay. She had her own very good reasons you may be sure. I dare say we would have died if she’d turned against us and that would have been a better fate. To die and be forgotten and at peace. Not to know that one is abandoned, lied about, helpless. All the ones who died – who says a good word for them now?’ ‘Godfrey stayed too,’ I said. ‘And Sass.’ ‘They stayed,’ she said angrily, ‘because they wanted somewhere to sleep and something to eat. That boy Sass! When his mother pranced off and left him here – a great deal she cared – why he was a little skeleton. Now he’s growing into a big strong boy and away he goes. We shan’t see him again. Godfrey is a rascal. These new ones aren’t too kind to old people and he knows it. That’s why he stays. Doesn’t do a thing but eat enough for a couple of horses. Pretends he’s deaf. He isn’t deaf – he doesn’t want to hear. What a devil he is!’ ‘Why don’t you tell him to find somewhere else to live?’ I said and she laughed.

‘He wouldn’t go. He’d probably try to force us out. I’ve learned to let sleeping curs lie,’ she said. ‘Would Christophine go if you told her to?’ I thought. But I didn’t say it. I was afraid to say it. It was too hot that afternoon. I could see the beads of perspiration on her upper lip and the dark circles under her eyes. I started to fan her, but she turned her head away. She might rest if I left her alone, she said. Once I would have gone back quietly to watch her asleep on the blue sofa – once I made excuses to be near her when she brushed her hair, a soft black cloak to cover me, hide me, keep me safe. But not any longer. Not any more. These were all the people in my life – my mother and Pierre, Christophine, Godfrey, and Sass who had left us. I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. Let sleeping dogs lie. One day a little girl followed my singing, ‘Go away white cockroach, go away, go away.’ I walked fast, but she walked faster. ‘White cockroach, go away go away. Nobody want you. Go away.’ When I was safely home I sat close to the old wall at the end of the garden. It was covered with green moss soft as velvet and I never wanted to move again. Everything would be worse if I moved. Christophine found me there when it was nearly dark, and I was so stiff she had to help me to get up. She said nothing, but next morning Tia was in the kitchen with her mother Maillotte, Christophine’s friend. Soon Tia was my friend and I met her nearly every morning at the turn of the road to the river. Sometimes we left the bathing pool at midday, sometimes we stayed till late afternoon. Then Tia would light a fire (fires always lit for her, sharp stones did not hurt her bare feet, I never saw her cry). We boiled green bananas in an old iron pot and ate them with our fingers out of a calabash and after we had eaten she slept at once. I could not sleep, but I wasn’t quite awake as I lay in the shade looking at the pool – deep and dark green under the trees, brown-green if it had rained, but a bright sparkling green in the sun. The water was so clear that you could see the pebbles at the bottom of the shallow part. Blue and white and striped red. Very pretty. Late or early we parted at the turn of the road. My mother never asked me where I had been or what I had done. Christophine had given me some new pennies which I kept in the pocket of my dress. They dropped out one morning so I put them on a stone. They shone like gold in the sun and Tia stared. She had small eyes, very black, set deep in her head.

clean dress for me. ‘Throw away that thing. Burn it.’ Then they quarrelled. Christophine said I had no clean dress. ‘She got two dresses, wash and wear. You want clean dress to drop from heaven? Some people crazy in truth.’ ‘She must have another dress,’ said my mother. ‘Somewhere.’ But Christophine told her loudly that it shameful. She run wild, she grow up worthless. And nobody care. My mother walked over to the window. (Marooned,’ said her straight narrow back, her carefully coiled hair. ‘Marooned.’) ‘She has an old muslin dress. Find that.’ While Christophine scrubbed my face and tied my plaits with a fresh piece of string, she told me that those were the new people at Nelson’s Rest. They called themselves Luttrell, but English or not English they were not like old Mr Luttrell. Old Mr Luttrell spit in their face if he see how they look at you. Trouble walk into the house this day. Trouble walk in.’ The old muslin dress was found and it tore as I forced it on. She didn’t notice. No more slavery! She had to laugh! ‘These new ones have Letter of the Law. Same thing. They got magistrate. They got fine. They got jail house and chain gang. They got tread machine to mash up people’s feet. New ones worse that old ones – more cunning, that’s all.’ All that evening my mother didn’t speak to me or look at me and I thought, ‘She is ashamed of me, what Tia said is true.’ I went to bed early and slept at once. I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy footsteps coming closer and though I struggled and screamed I could not move. I woke crying. The covering sheet was on the floor and my mother was looking down at me. ‘Did you have a nightmare?’ ‘Yes, a bad dream.’ She sighed and covered me up. ‘You were making such a noise. I must go to Pierre, you’ve frightened him.’ I lay thinking, ‘I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly furniture. There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains. And the barrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from strangers.’

The light of the candle in Pierre’s room was still there when I slept again. I woke next morning knowing that nothing would be the same. I would change and go on changing. I don’t know how she got money to buy the white muslin and the pink. Yards of muslin. She may have sold her last ring, for there was one left. I saw it in her jewel box – that, and a locket with a shamrock inside. They were mending and sewing first thing in the morning and still sewing when I went to bed. In a week she had a new dress and so had I. The Luttrells lent her a horse, and she would ride off very early and not come back till late next day – tired out because she had been to a dance or a moonlight picnic. She was gay and laughing – younger that I had ever seen her and the house was sad when she had gone. So I too left it and stayed away till dark. I was never long at the bathing pool, I never met Tia. I took another road, past the old sugar works and the water wheel that had not turned for years. I went to parts of Coulibri that I had not seen, where there was no road, no path, no track. And if the razor grass cut my legs and arms I would think ‘It’s better than people.’ Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin – once I saw a snake. All better than people. Better. Better, better than people. Watching the red and yellow flowers in the sun thinking of nothing, it was as if a door opened and I was somewhere else, something else. Not myself any longer. I knew the time of day when though it is hot and blue and there are no clouds, the sky can have a very black look. I was bridesmaid when my mother married Mr Mason in Spanish Town. Christophine curled my hair. I carried a bouquet and everything I wore was new – even my beautiful slippers. But their eyes slid away from my hating face. I had heard what all these smooth smiling people said about her when she was not listening and they did not guess I was. Hiding from them in the garden when they visited Coulibri, I listened. ‘A fantastic marriage and he will regret it. Why should a very wealthy man who could take his pick of all the girls in the West Indies, and many in England too probably?’ ‘Why probably?’ the other voice said. ‘ Certainly.’ ‘Then why should he marry a widow without a penny to her name and Coulibri a wreck of a place? Emancipation troubles killed old Cosway? Nonsense – the estate was going downhill for years before that. He drank himself to death. Many’s the time when – well! And all those women! She never did anything to stop him – she encouraged him. Presents and smiles for the bastards every Christmas. Old customs? Some old customs are better dead and buried. Her new husband will have to spend a pretty penny before the house is fit to live in – leaks like a sieve. And what about the stables and the coach house dark as pitch, and the servants’

I knew her room so well – the pictures of the Holy Family and the prayer for a happy death. She had a bright patchwork counterpane, a broken-down press for her clothes, and my mother had given her an old rocking-chair. Yet one day when I was waiting there I was suddenly very much afraid. The door was open to the sunlight, someone was whistling near the stables, but I was afraid. I was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?) there was a dead man’s dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly. Drop by drop of blood was falling into a red basin and I imagined I could hear it. No one had ever spoken to me about obeah – but I knew what I would find if I dared to look. Then Christophine came in smiling and pleased to see me. Nothing alarming ever happened and I forgot, or told myself I had forgotten. Mr Mason would laugh if he knew how frightened I had been. He would laugh even louder than he did when my mother told him that she wished to leave Coulibri. This began when they had been married for over a year. They always said the same things and I seldom listened to the argument now. I knew that we were hated – but to go away … for once I agreed with my stepfather. That was not possible. ‘You must have some reason,’ he would say, and she would answer ‘I need a change’ or ‘We could visit Richard’. (Richard, Mr Mason’s son by his first marriage, was at school in Barbados. He was going to England soon and we had seen very little of him.) ‘An agent should look after this place. For the time being. The people here hate us. They certainly hate me.’ Straight out she said that one day and it was then he laughed so heartily. ‘Annette, be reasonable. You were the widow of a slave-owner, the daughter of a slave- owner, and you had been living here alone, with two children, for nearly five tears when we met. Things were at their worst then. But you were never molested, never harmed.’ ‘How do you know that I was not harmed?’ she said. ‘We were so poor then,’ she told him, ‘we were something to laugh at. But we are not poor now,’ she said. ‘You are not a poor woman. Do you suppose that they don’t know all about your estate in Trinidad? And the Antigua property? They talk about us without stopping. They invent stories about you, and lies about me. They try to find out what we eat every day.’ ‘They are curious. It’s natural enough. You have lived alone far too long, Annette. You imagine enmity which doesn’t exist. Always one extreme or the other. Didn’t you fly at me like a little wild cat when I said nigger. Not nigger, nor even negro. Black people I must say.’ ‘You don’t like, or even recognize, the good in them,’ she said, ‘and you won’t believe in the other side.’

‘They’re too damn lazy to be dangerous,’ said Mr Mason. ‘I know that.’ ‘They are more alive than you are, lazy or not, and they can be dangerous and cruel for reasons you wouldn’t understand.’ ‘No, I don’t understand,’ Mr Mason always said. ‘I don’t understand at all.’ But she’d speak about going away again. Persistently. Angrily. Mr Mason pulled up near the empty huts on our way home that evening. ‘All gone to one of those dances,’ he said. ‘Young and old. How deserted the place looks.’ ‘We’ll hear the drums if there is a dance.’ I hoped he’d ride on quickly but he stayed by the huts to watch the sun go down, the sky and the sea were on fire when we left Bertrand Bay at last. From a long way off I saw the shadow of our house high up on its stone foundations. There was a smell of ferns and river water and I felt safe again, as if I was one of the righteous. (Godfrey said that we were not righteous. One day when he was drunk he told me that we were all damned and no use praying.) ‘They’ve chosen a very hot night for their dance,’ Mr Mason said, and Aunt Cora came on to the glacis. ‘What dance? Where?’ ‘There is some festivity in the neighbourhood. The huts were abandoned. A wedding perhaps?’ ‘Not a wedding,’ I said. ‘There is never a wedding.’ He frowned at me nut Aunt Cora smiled. When they had gone indoors I leaned my arms on the cool glacis railings and thought that I would never like him very much. I still called him ‘Mr Mason’ in my head. ‘Goodnight white pappy,’ I said one evening and he was not vexed, he laughed. In some ways it was better before he came though he’d rescued us from poverty and misery. ‘Only just in time too.’ The black people did not hate us quite so much when we were poor. We were white but we had not escaped and soon we would be dead for we had no money left. What was there to hate? Now it had started up again and worse than before, my mother knows but she can’t make him believe it. I wish I could tell him that out here is not at all like English people think it is. I wish … I could hear them talking and Aunt Cora’s laugh. I was glad she was staying with us. And I could hear the bamboos shiver and creak though there was no wind. It had been hot and still and dry for days. The colours had gone from the sky, the light was blue and could not last long. The glacis was not a good place when night was coming, Christophine said. As I went indoors my mother was talking in an excited voice.

talked about hell. Everyone went to hell, she told me, you had to belong to her sect to be saved and even then – just as well not to be sure. She had thin arms and big hands and feet and the handkerchief she wore round her head was always white. Never striped or a gay colour. So I looked away from her at my favourite picture, ‘The Miller’s Daughter’, a lovely English girl with brown curls and blue eyes and a dress slipping off her shoulders. Then I looked across the white tablecloth and the vase of yellow roses at Mr Mason, so sure of himself, so without a doubt English. And at my mother, so without a doubt not English, but no white nigger either. Not my mother. Never had been. Never could be. Yes, she would have died, I thought, if she had not met him. And for the first time I was grateful and liked him. There are more ways than one of being happy, better perhaps to be peaceful and contented and protected, as I feel now, peaceful for year and long years, and afterwards I may be saved whatever Myra says. (When I asked Christophine what happened when you died, she said, ‘You want to know too much.’) I remembered to kiss my stepfather goodnight. Once Aunt Cora had told me, ‘He’s very hurt because you never kiss him.’ ‘He does not look hurt,’ I argued. ‘Great mistake to go by looks.’ she said, ‘one way or the other.’ I went into Pierre’s room which was next to mine, the last one in the house. The bamboos were outside his window. You could almost touch them. He still had a crib and he slept more and more, nearly all the time. He was so thin that I could lift him easily. Mr Mason had promised to take him to England later on, there he would be cured, made like other people. ‘And how will you like that’ I thought, as I kissed him. ‘How will you like being made exactly like other people?’ He looked happy asleep. But that will be later on. Later on. Sleep now. It was then I heard the bamboos creak again and a sound like a whispering. I forced myself to look out of the window. There was a full moon but I saw nobody, nothing but shadows. I left a light on the chair by my bed and waited for Christophine, for I like to see her last thing. But she did not come, and as the candle burned down, the safe peaceful feeling left me. I wished I had a big Cuban dog to lie by my bed and protect me, I wish I had not heard a noise by the bamboo clump, or that I were very young again, for then I believe in my stick. It was not a stick, but a long narrow piece of wood, with two nails sticking out at the end, a shingle, perhaps. I picked it up soon after they killed our horse and I thought I can fight with this, if the worse comes to the worst I can fight to the end though the best ones fall and that is another song. Christophine knocked the nails out, but she let me keep the shingle and I grew very fond of it, I believed that no one could harm me when it was near me, to lose it would be a great misfortune. All this was long ago, when I was still babyish and sure that everything was alive, not only the river or the rain, but chairs, looking-glasses, cups, saucers, everything. I woke up and it was still night and my mother was there. She said, ‘Get up and dress yourself, and come downstairs quickly.’ She was dressed, but she had not put up her hair

and one of her plaits was loose. ‘Quickly,’ she said again, then she went into Pierre’s room, next door. I heard her speak to Myra and I heard Myra answer her. I lay there, half asleep, looking at the lighted candle on the chest of drawers, till I heard a noise as though a chair had fallen over in the little room, then I got up and dressed. The house was on different levels. There were three steps down from my bedroom and Pierre’s to the dining-room and then three steps from the dining-room to the rest of the house, which we called ‘downstairs’. The folding doors of the dining-room were not shut and I could see that the big drawing-room was full of people. Mr Mason, my mother, Christophine and Mannie and Sass. Aunt Cora was sitting on the blue sofa in the corner now, wearing a black silk dress, her ringlets were carefully arranged. She looked very haughty, I thought. But Godfrey was not there, or Myra, or the cook, or any of the others. ‘There is no reason to be alarmed,’ my stepfather was saying as I came in. ‘A handful of drunken negroes.’ He opened the door leading to the glacis and walked out. ‘What is all this,’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’ A horrible noise swelled up, like animals howling, but worse. We heard stones falling on to the glacis. He was pale when he came in again, but he tried to smile as he shut and bolted the door. ‘More of them than I thought, and in a nasty mood too. They will repent in the morning. I foresee gifts of tamarinds in syrup and ginger sweets tomorrow.’ ‘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

‘Annette,’ said Aunt Cora. ‘They are laughing at you, do not allow them to laugh at you.’ She stopped fighting then and he half supported, half pulled her after us, cursing loudly. Still they were quiet and there were so many of them I could hardly see any grass or tree. There must have been many of the bay people but I recognized no one. They all looked the same, it was the same face repeated over and over, eyes gleaming, mouth half open to shout. We were past the mounting stone when they saw Mannie driving the carriage round the corner. Sass followed, riding one horse and leading another. There was a ladies’ saddle on the one he was leading. Somebody yelled, ‘But look the black Englishman! Look the white niggers!’, and then they were all yelling. ‘Look the white niggers! Look the damn white niggers!’ A stone just missed Mannie’s head, he cursed back at them and they cleared away from the rearing, frightened horses. ‘Come on, for God’s sake,’ said Mr. Mason. ‘Get to the carriage, get to the horses.’ But we could not move for they pressed too close round us. Some of them were laughing and waving sticks, some of the ones at the back were carrying flambeaux and it was light as day. Aunt Cora held my hand very tightly and her lips moved but I could not hear because of the noise. And I was afraid, because I knew that the ones who laughed would be the worst. I shut my eyes and waited. Mr Mason stopped swearing and began to pray in a loud pious voice. The prayer ended, ‘May Almighty God defend us.’ And God who is indeed mysterious, who had made no sign when they burned Pierre as he slept – not a clap of thunder, not a flash of lightening – mysterious God heard Mr Mason at once and answered him. The yells stopped. I opened my eyes, everybody was looking up and pointing at Coco on the glacis railings with his feathers alight. He made an effort to fly down but his clipped wings failed him and he fell screeching. He was all on fire. I began to cry. ‘Don’t look,’ said Aunt Cora. ‘Don’t look.’ She stooped and put her arms round me and I hid my face, but I could feel that they were not so near. I heard someone say something about bad luck and remembered that it was very unlucky to kill a parrot, or even to see a parrot die. They began to go then, quickly, silently, and those that were left drew aside and watched us as we trailed across the grass. They were not laughing any more. ‘Get to the carriage, get to the carriage,’ said Mr Mason. ‘Hurry!’ He went first, holding my mothers arm, then Christophine carrying Pierre, and Aunt Cora was last, still with my hand in hers. None of us looked back. Mannie had stopped the horses at the bend of the cobblestone road and as we got closer we heard him shout, ‘What all you are, eh? Brute beasts?’ He was speaking to a group of men and a few women who were standing round the carriage. A coloured man with a machete in his hand was holding the bridle. I did not see Sass or the other two horses. ‘Get in,’ said Mr Mason. ‘Take no notice of him, get in.’ The man with the machete said no. We would go to police and tell a lot of damn lies. A woman said to let

us go. All this an accident and they had plenty witness. ‘Myra she witness for us.’ ‘Shut your mouth,’ the man said. ‘You mash centipede, mash it, leave one little piece and it grow again … What you think police believe, eh? You, or the white nigger?’ Mr Mason stared at him. He seemed not frightened, but too astounded to speak. Mannie took u the carriage whip but one of the blacker men wrenched it out of his hand, snapped it over his knee and threw it away. ‘Run away, black Englishman, like the boy run. Hide in the bushes. It’s better for you.’ It was Aunt Cora who stepped forward and said, ‘The little boy is very badly hurt. He will die if we cannot get help for him.’ The man said, ‘So black and white, they burned the same, eh?’ ‘They do,’ she said. ‘Here and hereafter, as you will find out. Very shortly.’ He let the bridle go and thrust his face close to hers. He’d throw her on the fire, he said, if she put bad luck on him. Old white jumby, he called her. But she did not move an inch, she looked straight into his eyes and threatened him with eternal fire in a calm voice. ‘And never a drop of sangoree to cool your burning tongue,’ she said. He cursed her again but he backed away. ‘Now get in,’ said Mr Mason. ‘You, Christophine, get in with the child.’ Christophine got in. ‘Now you,’ he said to my mother. But she had turned and was looking back at the house and when he put his hand on her arm, she screamed. One woman said she only come to see what happen. Another woman began to cry. The man with the cutlass said, ‘You cry for her – when she ever cry for you? Tell me that.’ But now I turned too. The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like sunset and I knew that I would never see Coulibri again. Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses, the rocking-chairs and the blue sofa, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, and the picture of the Miller’s Daughter. When they had finished, there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. That was always left. That could not be stolen or burned. Then, not so far off, I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all that was left of my life as it had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by side, bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go. Not. When I was close I saw the jagged stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass.

‘I saw my plait, tied with red ribbon, when I got up,’ I said. ‘In the chest of drawers. I thought it was a snake.’

‘My head is bandaged up. It’s so hot,’ I said. ‘Will I have a mark on my forehead?’ ‘No, no.’ She smiled for the first time. That is healing very nicely. It won’t spoil you on your wedding day,’ she said. She bent down and kissed me. ‘Is there anything you want? A cool drink to sip?’ ‘No, not a drink. Sing to me. I like that.’ She began in a shaky voice. ‘Every night at half past eight Comes tap tap tapping –’ ‘Not that one. I don’t like that one. Sing Before I was set free.’ She sat near me and sang very softly, ‘Before I was set free.’ I heard as far as ‘The sorrow that my heart feels for –’ I didn’t hear the end but I heard that before I slept, ‘The sorrow that my heart feels for.’ I was going to see my mother. I had insisted that Christophine must be with me, no one else, and as I was not yet quite well they had given way. I remember the dull feeling as we drove along for I did not expect to see her. She was part of Coulibri, that had gone, so she had gone, I was certain of it. But when we reached the tidy pretty little house where she lived now (they said) I jumped out of the carriage and ran as fast as I could across the lawn. One door was open on the veranda. I went in without knocking and stared at the people in the room. A coloured man, a coloured woman, and a white woman sitting with her head bent so low that I couldn’t see her face. But I recognized her hair, one plait much shorter than the other. And her dress. I put my arms round her and kissed her. She held me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and I thought, ‘It’s not her.’ Then ‘It must be her.’ She looked at the door, then at me, then at the door again. I could not say, ‘He is dead,’ so I shook my head. ‘But I am here, I am here,’ I said, and she said, ‘No,’ quietly. Then ‘No no no’ very loudly and flung me from her. I fell against the partition and hurt myself. The man and the woman were holding her arms and Christophine was there. The woman said, ‘Why you bring the child to make trouble, trouble, trouble? Trouble enough without that.’ All the way back to Aunt Cora’s house we didn’t speak. The first day I had to go to the convent, I clung to Aunt Cora as you would cling to life if you loved it. At last she got impatient, so I forced myself away from her and through he passage, down the steps into the street and, as I knew they would be, they were waiting for me under the sandbox tree. There were two of them, a boy and a girl. The boy was about fourteen and tall and big for his age, he had a white skin, a dull ugly white covered with freckles, his mouth was a negro’s mouth and he had small eyes, like bits of green glass. He had the eyes of a dead fish. Worst most horrible of all, his hair was crinkled, a

negro’s hair, but bright red, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were red. The girl was very black and wore no head handkerchief. Her hair had been plaited and I could smell the sickening oil she had daubed on it, from where I stood on the steps of Aunt Cora’s dark, clean, friendly house, staring at them. They looked so harmless and quiet, no one would have noticed the glint in the boy’s eyes. Then the girl grinned and began to crack the knuckles of her fingers. At each crack I jumped and my hands began to sweat. I was holding some school books in my right hand and shifted them to under my arm, but it was too late, there was a mark on the palm of my hand and a stain on the cover of the book. The girl began to laugh, very quietly, and it was then that hate came to me and courage with the hate so that I was able to walk past without looking at them. I knew they were following, I knew too that as log as I was in sight of Aunt Cora’s house they would do nothing but stroll along some distance after me. But I knew when they would draw close. It would be when I was going up the hill. There were walls and gardens on each side of the hill and no one would be there at this hour of the morning. Half-way up they closed in on me and started talking. The girl said, ‘Look the crazy girl, you crazy like your mother. Your aunt frightened to have you in the house. She send you for the nuns to lock up. Your mother walk about with no shoes and stockings on her feet, she sans culottes. She try to kill her husband and she try to kill you too that day you go to see her. She have eyes like zombie and you have eyes like zombie too. Why you won’t look at me.’ The boy only said, ‘One day I catch you alone, you wait, one day I catch you alone.’ When I got to the top of the hill they were jostling me, I could smell the girl’s hair. A long empty street stretched away to the convent, the convent wall and a wooden gate. I would have to ring before I could get in. The girl said, ‘You don’t want to look at me, eh, I make you look at me.’ She pushed me and the books I was carrying fell to the ground. I stoop to pick them up and saw that a tall boy that was walking along the other side of the street had stopped and looked toward us. Then he crossed over, running. He had long legs, his feet hardly touch the ground. As soon as they saw him, they turned and walked away. He looked after them, puzzled. I would have died sooner than run when they were there, but as soon as they had gone, I ran. I left one of my books on the ground and the tall boy came after me. ‘You dropped this,’ he said, and smiled. I knew who he was, his name was Sandi, Alexander Cosway’s son. Once I would have said ‘my cousin Sandi’ but Mr Mason’s lectures had made me shy about my coloured relatives. I muttered, ‘Thank you.’ ‘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.