by Jean Rhys
When Eddie said ‘no’, she did not even glance at him.
‘No,’ he said again in a high voice. ‘Not that one. I was reading that one.’
She laughed and he rushed at her, his eyes starting out of his head, shrieking, ‘Now I’ve got to hate you too. Now I hate you too.’
He snatched the book out of her hand and gave her a violent push. She fell into the rocking-chair.
Well, I wasn’t going to be left out of all this, so I grabbed a book from the condemned pile and dived under Mildred’s outstretched arm.
Then we were both in the garden. We ran along the path, bordered with crotons. We pelted down the path though they did not follow us and we could hear Mildred laughing – kyah, kyah, kyah, kyah. As I ran I put the book I had taken into the loose front of my brown holland dress. It felt warm and alive.
When we got into the street we walked sedately, for we feared the black children’s ridicule. I felt very happy, because I had saved this book and it was my book and I would read it from the beginning to the triumphant words ‘The End’. But I was uneasy when I thought of Mrs Sawyer.
‘What will she do?’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ Eddie said. ‘Not to me.’
He was white as a ghost in his sailor suit, a blue-white even in the setting sun, and his father’s sneer was clamped on his face.
‘But she’ll tell your mother all sorts of lies about you,’ he said. ‘She’s an awful liar. She can’t make up a story to save her life, but she makes up lies about people all right.’
‘My mother won’t take any notice of her,’ I said. Though I was not at all sure.
‘Why not? Because she’s . . . because she isn’t white?’
Well, I knew the answer to that one. Whenever the subject was brought up – people’s relations and whether they had a drop of coloured blood or whether they hadn’t – my father would grow impatient and interrupt. ‘Who’s white?’ he would say. ‘Damned few.’
So I said, ‘Who’s white? Damned few.’
‘You can go to the devil,’ Eddie said. ‘She’s prettier than your mother. When she’s asleep her mouth smiles and she has your curling eyelashes and quantities and quantities and quantities of hair.’
‘Yes,’ I said truthfully. ‘She’s prettier than my mother.’
It was a red sunset that evening, a huge, sad, frightening sunset.
‘Look, let’s go back,’ I said. ‘If you’re sure she won’t be vexed with you, let’s go back. It’ll be dark soon.’
At his gate he asked me not to go. ‘Don’t go yet, don’t go yet.’
We sat under the mango tree and I was holding his hand when he began to cry. Drops fell on my hand like the water from the dripstone in the filter in our yard. Then I began to cry too and when I felt my own tears on my hand I thought, ‘Now perhaps we’re married.
‘Yes, certainly, now we’re married,’ I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say a thing until I was sure he had stopped. Then I asked, ‘What’s your book?’
‘It’s Kim,’ he said. ‘But it got torn. It starts at page twenty now. What’s the one you took?’
‘I don’t know, it’s too dark to see,’ I said.
When I got home I rushed into my bedroom and locked the door because I knew that this book was the most important thing that had ever happened to me and I did not want anybody to be there when I looked at it.
But I was very disappointed, because it was in French and seemed dull. Fort Comme La Mort, it was called . . .
Let Them Call It Jazz
One bright Sunday morning in July I have trouble with my Notting Hill landlord because he ask for a month’s rent in advance. He tell me this after I live there since winter, settling up every week without fail. I have no job at the time, and if I give the money he want there’s not much left. So I refuse. The man drunk already at that early hour, and he abuse me – all talk, he can’t frighten me. But his wife is a bad one – now she walk in my room and say she must have cash. When I tell her no, she give my suitcase one kick and it burst open. My best dress fall out, then she laugh and give another kick. She say month in advance is usual, and if I can’t pay find somewhere else.
Don’t talk to me about London. Plenty people there have heart like stone. Any complaint – the answer is ‘prove it’. But if nobody see and bear witness for me, how to prove anything? So I pack up and leave. I think better not have dealings with that woman. She too cunning, and Satan don’t lie worse.
I walk about till a place nearby is open where I can have coffee and a sandwich. There I start talking to a man at my table. He talk to me already, I know him, but I don’t know his name. After a while he ask, ‘What’s the matter? Anything wrong?’ and when I tell him my trouble he say I can use an empty flat he own till I have time to look around.
This man is not at all like most English people. He see very quick, and he decide very quick. English people take long time to decide – you three-quarter dead before they make up their mind about you. Too besides, he speak very matter of fact, as if it’s nothing. He speak as if he realize well what it is to live like I do – that’s why I accept and go.
He tell me somebody occupy the flat till last week, so I find everything all right, and he tell me how to get there – three-quarters of an hour from Victoria Station, up a steep hill, turn left, and I can’t mistake the house. He give me the keys and an envelope with a telephone number on the back. Underneath is written ‘After 6 p.m. ask for Mr Sims.’
In the train that evening I think myself lucky, for to walk about London on a Sunday with nowhere to go – that take the heart out of you.
I find the place and the bedroom of the downstairs flat is nicely furnished – two looking glass, wardrobe, chest of drawers, sheets, everything. It smell of jasmine scent, but it smell strong of damp too.
I open the door opposite and there’s a table, a couple chairs, a gas stove and a cupboard, but this room so big it look empty. When I pull the blind up I notice the paper peeling off and mushrooms growing on the walls – you never see such a thing.
The bathroom the same, all the taps rusty. I leave the two other rooms and make up the bed. Then I listen, but I can’t hear one sound. Nobody come in, nobody go out of that house. I lie awake for a long time, then I decide not to stay and in the morning I start to get ready quickly before I change my mind. I want to wear my best dress, but it’s a funny thing – when I take up that dress and remember how my landlady kick it I cry. I cry and I can’t stop. When I stop I feel tired to my bones, tired like old woman. I don’t want to move again – I have to force myself. But in the end I get out in the passage and there’s a postcard for me. ‘Stay as long as you like. I’ll be seeing you soon – Friday probably. Not to worry.’ It isn’t signed, but I don’t feel so sad and I think, ‘All right, I wait here till he come. Perhaps he know of a job for me.’
Nobody else live in the house but a couple on the top floor – quiet people and they don’t trouble me. I have no word to say against them.
First time I meet the lady she’s opening the front door and she give me a very inquisitive look. But next time she smile a bit and I smile back – once she talk to me. She tell me the house very old, hundred and fifty year old, and she and her husband live there since long time. ‘Valuable property,’ she says, ‘it could have been saved, but nothing done of course.’ Then she tells me that as to the present owner – if he is the owner – well he have to deal with local authorities and she believe they make difficulties. ‘These people are determined to pull down all the lovely old houses – it’s shameful.’
So I agree that many things shameful. But what to do? What to do? I say it have an elegant shape, it make the other houses in the street look cheap trash, and she seem pleased. That’s true too. The house sad and out of place, especially at night. But it have style. The second floor shut up, and as for my flat, I go in the two empty rooms once, but never again.
Underneath was the cellar, full of old boards and broken
-up furniture – I see a big rat there one day. It was no place to be alone in I tell you, and I get the habit of buying a bottle of wine most evenings, for I don’t like whisky and the rum here no good. It don’t even taste like rum. You wonder what they do to it.
After I drink a glass or two I can sing and when I sing all the misery goes from my heart. Sometimes I make up songs but next morning I forget them, so other times I sing the old ones like ‘Tantalizin’ ’ or ‘Don’t Trouble Me Now’.
I think I go but I don’t go. Instead I wait for the evening and the wine and that’s all. Everywhere else I live – well, it doesn’t matter to me, but this house is different – empty and no noise and full of shadows, so that sometimes you ask yourself what make all those shadows in an empty room.
I eat in the kitchen, then I clean up everything and have a bath for coolness. Afterwards I lean my elbows on the windowsill and look at the garden. Red and blue flowers mix up with the weeds and there are five-six apple trees. But the fruit drop and lie in the grass, so sour nobody want it. At the back, near the wall, is a bigger tree – this garden certainly take up a lot of room, perhaps that’s why they want to pull the place down.
Not much rain all the summer, but not much sunshine either. More of a glare. The grass get brown and dry, the weeds grow tall, the leaves on the trees hang down. Only the red flowers – the poppies – stand up to that light, everything else look weary.
I don’t trouble about money, but what with wine and shillings for the slot-meters, it go quickly; so I don’t waste much on food. In the evening I walk outside – not by the apple trees but near the street – it’s not so lonely.
There’s no wall here and I can see the woman next door looking at me over the hedge. At first I say good evening, but she turn away her head, so afterwards I don’t speak. A man is often with her, he wear a straw hat with a black ribbon and goldrim spectacles. His suit hang on him like it’s too big. He’s the husband it seems and he stare at me worse than his wife – he stare as if I’m wild animal let loose. Once I laugh in his face because why these people have to be like that? I don’t bother them. In the end I get that I don’t even give them one single glance. I have plenty other things to worry about.
To show you how I felt. I don’t remember exactly. But I believe it’s the second Saturday after I come that when I’m at the window just before I go for my wine I feel somebody’s hand on my shoulder and its Mr Sims. He must walk very quiet because I don’t know a thing till he touch me.
He says hullo, then he tells me I’ve got terrible thin, do I ever eat. I say of course I eat but he goes on that it doesn’t suit me at all to be so thin and he’ll buy some food in the village. (That’s the way he talk. There’s no village here. You don’t get away from London so quick.)
It don’t seem to me he look very well himself, but I just say bring a drink instead, as I am not hungry.
He come back with three bottles – vermouth, gin and red wine. Then he ask if the little devil who was here last smash all the glasses and I tell him she smash some, I find the pieces. But not all. ‘You fight with her, eh?’
He laugh, and he don’t answer. He pour out the drinks then he says, ‘Now, you eat up those sandwiches.’
Some men when they are there you don’t worry so much. These sort of men you do all they tell you blindfold because they can take the trouble from your heart and make you think you’re safe. It’s nothing they say or do. It’s a feeling they can give you. So I don’t talk with him seriously – I don’t want to spoil that evening. But I ask about the house and why it’s so empty and he says:
‘Has the old trout upstairs been gossiping?’
I tell him, ‘She suppose they make difficulties for you.’
‘It was a damn bad buy,’ he says and talks about selling the lease or something. I don’t listen much.
We were standing by the window then and the sun low. No more glare. He puts his hand over my eyes. ‘Too big – much too big for your face,’ he says and kisses me like you kiss a baby. When he takes his hand away I see he’s looking out at the garden and he says this – ‘It gets you. My God it does.’
I know very well it’s not me he means, so I ask him, ‘Why sell it then? If you like it, keep it.’
‘Sell what?’ he says. ‘I’m not talking about this damned house.’
I ask what he’s talking about. ‘Money,’ he says. ‘Money. That’s what I’m talking about. Ways of making it.’
‘I don’t think so much of money. It don’t like me and what do I care?’ I was joking, but he turns around, his face quite pale and he tells me I’m a fool. He tells me I’ll get pushed around all my life and die like a dog, only worse because they’d finish off a dog, but they’ll let me live till I’m a caricature of myself. That’s what he say, ‘Caricature of yourself.’ He say I’ll curse the day I was born and everything and everybody in this bloody world before I’m done.
I tell him, ‘No I’ll never feel like that’, and he smiles, if you can call it a smile, and says he’s glad I’m content with my lot. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Selina. I thought you had more spirit.’
‘If I contented that’s all right,’ I answer him. ‘I don’t see very many looking contented over here.’ We’re standing staring at each other when the doorbell rings. ‘That’s a friend of mine,’ he says. ‘I’ll let him in.’
As to the friend, he’s all dressed up in stripe pants and a black jacket and he’s carrying a brief-case. Very ordinary looking but with a soft kind of voice.
‘Maurice, this is Selina Davis,’ says Mr Sims, and Maurice smiles very kind but it don’t mean much, then he looks at his watch and says they ought to be getting along.
At the door Mr Sims tells me he’ll see me next week and I answer straight out, ‘I won’t be here next week because I want a job and I won’t get one in this place.’
‘Just what I’m going to talk about. Give it a week longer, Selina.’
I say, ‘Perhaps I stay a few more days. Then I go. Perhaps I go before.’
‘Oh no you won’t go,’ he says.
They walk to the gates quickly and drive off in a yellow car. Then I feel eyes on me and it’s the woman and her husband in the next door garden watching. The man make some remark and she look at me so hateful, so hating I shut the front door quick.
I don’t want more wine. I want to go to bed early because I must think. I must think about money. It’s true I don’t care for it. Even when somebody steal my savings – this happen soon after I get to the Notting Hill house – I forget it soon. About thirty pounds they steal. I keep it roll up in a pair of stockings, but I go to the drawer one day, and no money. In the end I have to tell the police. They ask me exact sum and I say I don’t count it lately, about thirty pounds. ‘You don’t know how much?’ they say. ‘When did you count it last? Do you remember? Was it before you move or after?’
I get confuse, and I keep saying, ‘I don’t remember’, though I remember well I see it two days before. They don’t believe me and when a policeman come to the house I hear the landlady tell him, ‘She certainly had no money when she came here. She wasn’t able to pay a month’s rent in advance for her room though it’s a rule in this house.’ ‘These people terrible liars,’ she say and I think ‘it’s you a terrible liar, because when I come you tell me weekly or monthly as you like.’ It’s from that time she don’t speak to me and perhaps it’s she take it. All I know is I never see one penny of my savings again, all I know is they pretend I never have any, but as it’s gone, no use to cry about it. Then my mind goes to my father, for my father is a white man and I think a lot about him. If I could see him only once, for I too small to remember when he was there. My mother is fair coloured woman, fairer than I am they say, and she don’t stay long with me either. She have a chance to go to Venezuela when I three-four year old and she never come back. She send money instead. It’s my grandmother take care of me. She’s quite dark and what we call ‘country-cookie’ but she’s the best I know.
She save up all the money my mother send, she don’t keep one penny for herself – that’s how I get to England. I was a bit late in going to school regular, getting on for twelve years, but I can sew very beautiful, excellent – so I think I get a good job – in London perhaps.
However here they tell me all this fine handsewing take too long. Waste of time – too slow. They want somebody to work quick and to hell with the small stitches. Altogether it don’t look so good for me, I must say, and I wish I could see my father. I have his name – Davis. But my grandmother tell me, ‘Every word that comes out of that man’s mouth a damn lie. He is certainly first class liar, though no class otherwise.’ So perhaps I have not even his real name.
Last thing I see before I put the light out is the postcard on the dressing table. ‘Not to worry.’
Not to worry! Next day is Sunday, and it’s on the Monday the people next door complain about me to the police. That evening the woman is by the hedge, and when I pass her she says in very sweet quiet voice, ‘Must you stay? Can’t you go?’ I don’t answer. I walk out in the street to get rid of her. But she run inside her house to the window, she can still see me. Then I start to sing, so she can understand I’m not afraid of her. The husband call out: ‘If you don’t stop that noise I’ll send for the police.’ I answer them quite short. I say, ‘You got to hell and take your wife with you.’ And I sing louder.
The police come pretty quick – two of them. Maybe they just round the corner. All I can say about police, and how they behave is I think it all depends who they dealing with. Of my own free will I don’t want to mix up with police. No.
One man says, you can’t cause this disturbance here. But the other asks a lot of questions. What is my name? Am I tenant of a flat in No. 17? How long have I lived there? Last address and so on. I get vexed the way he speak and I tell him, ‘I come here because somebody steal my savings. Why you don’t look for my money instead of bawling at me? I work hard for my money. All you don’t do one single thing to find it.’