London, then slums with Afro- Kipling (1865?1936), about an Irish orphan boy Caribbean immigrants. growing up in India.
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2362 / JEAN RHYS
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,2 up a steep hill, turn left, and 1 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. 1 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
had 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 deter
mined 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, espe
cially 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.
2. Train station in London.
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LET THEM CALL IT JAZZ / 2363
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.
1 don't trouble about money, but what with wine and shillings for the slotmeters, 3 it go quickly; so I don't
