It was the poetry shelf. Poems, Lord Byron, Poetical Works, Milton, and so on. Vlung, vlung, vlung?all thrown into the heap that were to be sold. But a book by Christina Rossetti, though also bound in leather, went into the heap that was to be burnt, and by a flicker in Mrs Sawyer's eyes I knew that worse than men who wrote books were women who wrote books?infinitely worse. Men could be mercifully shot; women must be tortured.
Mrs Sawyer did not seem to notice that we were there, but she was breathing free and easy and her hands had got the rhythm of tearing and pitching. She looked beautiful, too?beautiful as the sky outside which was a very dark blue, or the mango tree, long sprays of brown and gold.
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.5 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
4. Published in 1888 by the English historian 5. Tropical plants. James Anthony Froude (1818-1894).
.
LET THEM CALL IT JAZZ / 2361
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 filter6 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,'7 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,8 it was called. . . .
1960
Let Them Call It Jazz
One bright Sunday morning in July I have trouble with my Notting Hill1 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 1 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.
6. Dripstone is a sandstone used as a filter to clean 8. Strong as Death, 1889 novel by the French water for household use. writer Guy de Maupassant (1 850-1893). 7. Novel (1901) by the English writer Rudyard 1. Area of
