that afterwards she had picked up some of the hair he pulled out and put it in an envelope, and that Mr Sawyer ought to look out (hair is obeah7 as well as hands).
Of course, Mrs Sawyer had her compensations. They lived in a very pleasant house in Hill Street. The garden was large and they had a fine mango tree, which bore prolifically. The fruit was small, round, very sweet and juicy?a lovely, red-and-yellow colour when it was ripe. Perhaps it was one of the compensations, I used to think.
Mr Sawyer built a room on to the back of this house. It was unpainted inside and the wood smelt very sweet. Bookshelves lined the walls. Every time the Royal Mail steamer8 came in it brought a package for him, and gradually the empty shelves filled.
Once I went there with Eddie to borrow The Arabian Nights,9 That was on a Saturday afternoon, one of those hot, still afternoons when you felt that everything had gone to sleep, even the water in the gutters. But Mrs Sawyer was not asleep. She put her head in at the door and looked at us, and I knew that she hated the room and hated the books.
It was Eddie with the pale blue eyes and straw-coloured hair?the living image of his father, though often as silent as his mother?who first infected me with doubts about 'home', meaning England. He would be so quiet when others who had never seen it?none of us had ever seen it?were talking about its delights, gesticulating freely as we talked?London, the beautiful, rosy- cheeked ladies, the theatres, the shops, the fog, the blazing coal fires in winter, the exotic food (whitebait1 eaten to the sound of violins), strawberries and
4. Formerly British, Caribbean island off north-Company, that ferried mail from London to the east Venezuela. West Indies beginning in 1841. 5. Offensive term for a person of mixed racial 9. Also called The Thousand and One Nights, a descent. collection of old stories, largely Persian, Arabian, 6. Female vampire, in Caribbean legend. and Indian in origin. 7. A charm or fetish used in Afro-Caribbean 1. Young of a small fish, such as herring, considwitchcraft or sorcery. ered a delicacy when cooked whole. 8. Ship, owned by the Royal Mail Steam Packet
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THE DAY THEY BURNED THE BOOKS / 2359
cream?the word 'strawberries' always spoken with a guttural and throaty sound which we imagined to be the proper English pronunciation.
'I don't like strawberries,' Eddie said on one occasion.
'You don't like strawberries?'
'No, and I don't like daffodils either. Dad's always going on about them. He says they lick the flowers here into a cocked hat2 and I bet that's a lie.'
We were all too shocked to say, 'You don't know a thing about it.' We were so shocked that nobody spoke to him for the rest of the day. But I for one admired him. I also was tired of learning and reciting poems in praise of daffodils, and my relations with the few 'real' English boys and girls I had met were awkward. I had discovered that if I called myself English they would snub me haughtily: 'You're not English; you're a horrid colonial.' 'Well, I don't much want to be English,' I would say. 'It's much more fun to be French or Spanish or something like that?and, as a matter of fact, I am a bit.' Then I was too killingly funny, quite ridiculous. Not only a horrid colonial, but also ridiculous. Heads I win, tails you lose?that was the English. I had thought about all this, and thought hard, but I had never dared to tell anybody what I thought and I realized that Eddie had been very bold.
But he was bold, and stronger than you would think. For one thing, he never felt the heat; some coldness in his fair skin resisted it. He didn't burn red or brown, he didn't freckle much.
Hot days seemed to make him feel especially energetic. 'Now we'll run twice round the lawn and then you can pretend you're dying of thirst in the desert and that I'm an Arab chieftain bringing you water.'
'You must drink slowly,' he would say, 'for if you're very thirsty and you drink quickly you die.'
So I learnt the voluptuousness of drinking slowly when you are very thirsty? small mouthful by small mouthful, until the glass of pink, iced Coca-Cola was empty.
Just after my twelfth birthday Mr Sawyer died suddenly, and as Eddie's special friend I went to the funeral, wearing a new white dress. My straight hair was damped with sugar and water the night before and plaited into tight little plaits, so that it should be fluffy for the occasion.
When it was all over everybody said how nice Mrs Sawyer had looked, walking like a queen behind the coffin and crying her eyeballs out at the right moment, and wasn't Eddie a funny boy? He hadn't cried at all.
After this Eddie and I took possession of the room with the books. No one else ever entered it, except Mildred to sweep and dust in the mornings, and gradually the ghost of Mr Sawyer pulling Mrs Sawyer's hair faded, though this took a little time. The blinds were always halfway down and going in out of the sun was like stepping into a pool of brown-green water. It was empty except for the bookshelves, a desk with a green baize3 top and a wicker rocking-chair.
'My room,' Eddie called it. 'My books,' he would say, 'my books.'
I don't know how long this lasted. I don't know whether it was weeks after Mr Sawyer's death or months after, that I see myself and Eddie in the room. But there we are and there, unexpectedly, are Mrs Sawyer and Mildred. Mrs Sawyer's mouth tight, her eyes pleased. She is pulling all the books out of the
2. From knocked into a cocked hat: make them Indies. look terrible by comparison. Daffodils are common 3. Feltlike fabric. in English poetry, but do not grow in the West
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2360 / JEAN RHYS
shelves and piling them into two heaps. The big, fat glossy ones?the good- looking ones, Mildred explains in a whisper?lie in one heap. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, British Flowers, Birds and Beasts, various histories, books with maps, Froude's English in the West Indies4 and so on?they are going to be sold. The unimportant books, with paper covers or damaged covers or torn pages, lie in another heap. They are going to be burnt?yes, burnt.
Mildred's expression was extraordinary as she said that?half hugely delighted, half shocked, even frightened. And as for Mrs Sawyer?well, I knew bad temper (I had often seen it), I knew rage, but this was hate. I recognized the difference at once and stared at her curiously. I edged closer to her so that 1 could see the titles of the books she was handling.
