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 it's 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 1 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
Coin-fed meters for gas and electricity.
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2364 / JEAN RHYS
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?'
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LET THEM CALL IT JAZZ / 2365
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
