by David Plante
“I don’t recognize it,” I said.
“Fancy you don’t know it. That’s maybe because you’re American. Americans are so stupid. They don’t know anything, only their own literature, which isn’t much. We’re friends, aren’t we? You’ve got to forget about all past American writers. You’ve got to forget about Henry James. You’ve got to forget about America. ‘Live and take comfort . . . thou hast great allies; thy friends are exultations, agonies, and man’s unconquerable mind—’” She put her glass down, her hands to her face; when she took her hands away her face was wet and twisted with weeping. “‘—and man’s unconquerable mind.’” She raised her hands. “Oh, to die like a tree falling. Oh, to be big, to be large, to be huge. That’s what you have to be. To be big. There are no big people in the world now. You must be big.” She picked up her drink, paused, then whispered, in sing-song, “‘Oh England, my England, what can I do for you?’ No, that’s wrong. ‘What can I do for you, oh England, my England?’” Her face tensed. She spat. “It’s shit. It’s shit, England.”
Her face became smooth, her eyes went out of focus. “And yet, and yet. Nelson, he was big. There were big people in England. He was like a Caesar. ‘Kiss me, Hardy.’ He wasn’t homosexual, I don’t believe it. He was bisexual, as we all are. He was big, was great, was huge. He died for England. England? ‘What can I do for you, oh England, my England?’ I came here when I was sixteen, to this cold dark country, where I was never warm.” Her upper lip rose and she again spat. “Shit!”
Immediately, her face relaxed again, became, it seemed, as soft and vague as her eyes. “And yet, I do know it had a certain gentleness, an honesty. Gone, all gone. In the West Country, there you can still find people who are like trees, and when they die they die like huge trees falling over. People close to the land. I’ll never, never forget the dignity of that black man walking through the yard with his sixpence and the loaf of bread under his arm. And it’s all gone, all gone. They’ve destroyed it themselves. Are there any men now like that black man? We didn’t treat them badly, we didn’t. They say we did. It’s all gone, the dignity, and I want out. There are no big men left.” She shouted, “War! War! War! Martyrs, and for what? For what? There was a boy from the West Country, died in Belfast. He was nineteen. He wanted to be a sailor. Oh they killed him, they killed him! I remember, during the war, I worked in a canteen in King’s Cross, serving breakfast to soldiers who were going across. We weren’t allowed, the girls, to get into conversations with the soldiers. We served them, that was all. There was one, a young soldier, belted up with all kinds of straps and tin cans hanging from the straps, who came behind the counter into the kitchen. He must have done it on a dare. He said he had a strap twisted and would I straighten it for him? I did, and he gave me a big wink. And I wondered for a long time if he died. Oh war! It’s all gone. I wanted to tell you how I started to write. I’m telling you. I’ll never write it now that I’m telling you. Will you write it? If you don’t, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, nothing matters. It’s all shit.” She laughed. “I’m a slut without a penny.” Her face twisted and she wept. “Nothing matters. Nothing.” She laughed again, with a shrug of her body, and, in a very quiet voice, sang:
“If you want to be happy,
Like a child with a toy balloon,
Turn your money over in your pocket
In the light of a full moon.”
She shook her head and drank. “‘Man’s unconquerable mind.’ Fancy you don’t know that. ‘Upon this bank and shoal of time, I’ll leap to time to come.’ Do you know that?”
I half frowned, half smiled. “Let me think—”
“You don’t know. It’s because you’re American, and Americans are stupid. You should know. You should know it all. You should know all the big writers, the big big writers.” She raised her hand. “You have to be big.” She lowered her hand. “And yet, and yet, I’m so small, I’m nothing.”
“Jean,” I said, “please—” I did not know how to respond to her. When she laughed, I smiled; when she wept, I stared sadly at her. Sometimes, because her feelings changed so quickly, I stared when she laughed, and smiled when she wept.
She said, “Listen to me. I want to tell you something very important. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. And there are trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake. It is very important. Nothing else is important.”
Tears came to my eyes.
“Do you believe that?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But you now should be taking from the lake before you can think of feeding it. You must dip your bucket in very deep.”
I blinked to rid my eyes of tears.
“Oh David, oh, what one could do, what one could do! Not I. I can’t do anything. I don’t matter. What matters is the lake. And man’s unconquerable mind.”
I reached out and held her wrist for a moment.
She asked, “Do you hate women?”
I took my hand away.
“No,” I said, “I don’t hate women. I have very complicated feelings towards them.”
“You must hate them, though.”
“Sometimes I hate some women,” I said.
“A man needs a woman,” she said, “but a woman without a man is nothing, nothing.”
“You really think that?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. What they try to make of me, women, I hate. I hate it. Do they understand? No. Does anyone understand? I hate. I hate them. We didn’t treat them badly. We didn’t. I hate them.” She put her hand to her chin. “And yet I was kissed once by a Nigerian, in a café in Paris, and I understood, a little. I understand why they are attractive. It goes very deep. They danced, danced in the sunlight, and how I envied them.” She stopped, appeared to collapse inwardly, her drink resting on her crossed leg; then she seemed suddenly to rouse herself internally, and she shouted, “Oh David, I’m unhappy. You be happy. I’m so unhappy, all my life I’ve been so unhappy. It’s unfair. I’m dying. I want to die. It’s unfair. I’m dying, my body’s dying, and inside I think: it’s unfair, it’s unfair, I’ve never lived, I’ve never lived.” She sank back and finished her drink. “But I don’t care any more. I’m not even interested in makeup any more.
“If you want to be happy
Like a child with a toy balloon,
Just turn your money in your pocket
In the light of a new moon.
“Give me another drink, will you, honey? And put only one cube in it.”
I did. I took another for myself; but, attentive and in my attentiveness frightened of Jean, I didn’t get drunk.
She said, “I wanted to tell you how I started to write. I was living in Holborn. I hated it, the bed-sitting room. A girl friend came. No, she wasn’t a girl friend. We were in a movie together. I can’t remember her name. She said, ‘Move to Chelsea. You’ll have a good time in Chelsea. You’ll get over him there.’ I moved, not to Chelsea, but to Fulham, into a room that was exactly like the one I left. I was going to my room one day and I saw in a shop window some quills, red and green and blue, and I thought, how pretty, I’ll buy some quill pens to liven up my grim little room. I went into the shop. I didn’t know why, but I bought a copybook, too, a thick copybook with shiny black covers and a red edge. I bought, too, nibs, a blotter, ink. When I got back to my room I put everything on a table. I swear, I swear I didn’t know what I was about to do until the palms of my hands began to tingle and I knew, all at once, that I was going to write, I was going to write in the copybook everything that had happened to me, that had happened between him and me, and I started then. I wrote for days.”
In my mind I tried to put together the bits she told me. In one way I was bored and thought: She’s right, none of this matters. And in another way I thought: I must get all this put together.
I said, “Then you met Jean?”
; “Jean?”
“The man you married after you were abandoned.”
“Abandoned? Did I say I was abandoned?”
“No. I said it.”
She said, “I filled the copybook and I put it under my under-clothes in the back of a drawer. When I went to Holland to marry Jean I packed it. I packed it, over and over, every time we moved, and we moved about a lot. Anyway—” She closed her eyes slowly, as if she were very tired.
I said, “Would you like to rest now, Jean?”
She opened her eyes, as if surprised. “Don’t go now, honey. Stay. But maybe you want to go.”
“No,” I said, “I want to stay.”
“How can you like listening to me talk on and on?”
I said, “I used to listen to my mother—”
The corner of her upper lip rose and her face took on the hardness of an old whore who, her eyes red with having wept for so long, suddenly decides to be hard. “Your mother?” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear about your mother!”
I shut up. I thought: What am I doing here, listening to her? Is it because she is a writer? I am not sure I have read all her books, not even sure I admire her very greatly as a novelist. Is it because I want to know her so well that I will know her better than anyone else, or know at least secrets she has kept from everyone else, which I will always keep to myself? If so, why?
She said, pulling her hat brim so it now hung unevenly about her head, “Jean and I lived in Paris. We lived in a hotel. We had a daughter. We didn’t have any money. I suggested to Jean that he write some articles and I would translate them. I remembered that I had met in London the wife of a newspaper correspondent, that she now lived with him in Paris, and that she might help me. I took the articles to her. She said she couldn’t use them. Then, I suppose when she saw the desperation on my face, she asked me if I wrote anything. I said, at first, no. But, I don’t know why, I remembered the copybook I had filled up with writing years before. I told her about it. She said she wanted to see it. I went home, I wrapped it in newspaper, and left it with her concierge, and I thought, well, that’s the last of that. She got in touch with me. She asked me if she could type it out and alter it, and I said yes. I didn’t know what she saw in it. She called it ‘Triple Sec.’ She asked me if she could send it to Ford Madox Ford. I didn’t know who he was. She said, ‘He runs a review, the transatlantic review; and he’s very famous for spotting good young writers and helping them.’ Well, she sent it.” Jean raised her arm and let her hand fall into her lap. “And that’s how I got to know Ford.”
With the mention of his name, I became more attentive, and more, I think, frightened. Here Jean was talking to me about this most private episode, the episode about which, she had said in her only references to it, so many people had told lies, lies, lies. It was as if she suddenly opened the door to the closed centre of her life, a café in Paris in the Twenties, and in the café were Jean and Ford and his wife Stella at one table, and at other tables were Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and half-blind James Joyce. It was the café I had, since my adolescence, fantasized about sitting in. She was going to take me in and give me a seat by her in the café. I thought, staring at her: You are attentive to her, not as Mrs. Hamer, but Jean Rhys; you are not really interested in the private life of Mrs. Hamer, but very much in that of Jean Rhys. It is because she is a writer that you see her, sit with her, listen to her; your interest in her is literary. Her head was tilted and she was looking at me. You want to know her secrets because they have to do with Jean Rhys, the writer.
I said, “Jean, I think I should go.”
She said, wistfully, her eyes large, “Do you, honey?”
“I should.”
She smiled. Her eyes went out of focus. She said, “You’ve cheered me up.”
“I’m glad.”
“Sit with me for one more drink.”
I had been with her, I saw from my watch, for five hours.
“One more,” I said.
“I promise I won’t bore you.”
“You don’t bore me.”
I gave her another drink. She reached for it with both hands. Her makeup had streaked down her face with her crying, and her hair, which she had been pulling at, stuck out stiffly under the warped hat brim. Her eyes and nose were red.
She said, “Tell me about yourself.”
“I’d much rather hear about you.”
“You would say that,”
I laughed. I said, “Quote me some more lines of poetry.”
She laughed, too. “You like that?”
“Yes.”
She rubbed her forehead. “‘ . . . man’s unconquerable mind,’” she said.
“Because I’m an American and inveterately stupid,” I said, “tell me who wrote that.”
She frowned a little, as if it were an embarrassment to say something so obvious. “Wordsworth.”
“Which bit?”
“To Toussaint l’Ouverture, the black man who governed Santo Domingo and led the free slaves—”
“I see,” I said.
When she drank, the drink spilled down the side of her chin on to her dress; she did not seem aware. It was as if she had to look all over the room to find me before she could stare at me and say, “I’ll die soon.” Her eyes narrowed on me. “I’ll die without having lived.” A sneer came over her face, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was sneering at me. She said, with the sneer, “‘Upon this bank and shoal of time, I’ll leap to time to come.’” Her head wobbled. “Yes, yes, I’ll leap. I want out.” She leaned towards me. “You don’t understand. You never understood. I want out. I never wanted to be a writer. Never. I couldn’t help it. All I wanted was to be happy.”
I put my glass down on the table between us. I said, “Jean, excuse me.”
She slumped back.
I got up, went, moving carefully about the furniture, to the bathroom just off her room. I peed, washed my face. I looked at myself in the mirror above the wash-basin and thought: Who are you? When I came out, I thought Jean had died; slumped, she was utterly motionless, her eyes wide open and blank. I stood over her, said, “Jean,” and her body, it appeared, was shocked into attention to me; she looked up at me, and after a while, in a slurred voice, said, “I know, you’ve got to go.”
“I really have got to,” I said.
“Before you go,” she said, “help me to the toilet.”
It took a lot of manoeuvering to get her up and into the bathroom; I left her, her hat still on, holding to the wash-basin. In her room, I walked about. There were vases of flowers on the bureau, with cards. I thought: She’s been in there a long time. I heard: “Oh my God!,” and it occurred to me that she had seen her face in the mirror. I waited more, a longer while. I heard her say, “David, David.” I went to the bathroom door, leaned close to it, and called, “Jean.” There was no response. “Jean,” I called. She said, in a weak voice, “Help me.” I thought: But I can’t go in. What does she want me for in there? “Help me,” she said.
I opened the door a little, imagining, perhaps, that if I opened it only a little, only a little would have happened. I saw Jean, her head with the battered hat leaning far to the side, her feet, with the knickers about her ankles, just off the floor, stuck in the toilet. I had, I immediately realized, forgotten to lower the seat after I had peed. Jean said, with a kind of moan, “Help me.” Her eyes were huge. She was clasping her raised knees. I stepped into the puddle of pee all around the toilet, put my arms around her, and lifted her. In my arms, she sobbed. I held her closely, but I was frightened to hold her too closely because she felt so frail, and I thought I might hurt her. Her body shook as she sobbed. The brim of her hat was under my chin; with one hand I took off her hat, put it on the wash-basin, and, holding Jean, kissed her on her forehead. I held her till she stopped sobbing.
I said, “Shall I try to carry you to the bed or can you walk?”
“I’ll try to walk,” she said.
&nb
sp; But she was hobbled by her knickers. I leaned her against a wall, bent down, asked her to lift one foot then the other, and took off her sopping knickers. We walked small step by small step to the bed. I turned her round so she could sit on the foot, and she dropped backwards. She couldn’t raise herself to lie full length. I drew her up by holding her under her arms and pulling slowly, but she was very heavy; the bedspread rucked under her. I finally got her full length. She was shivering. She said, “I’m so cold.” I took a blanket from the second bed and covered her. She rolled her head back and forth against the pillow, and, weeping, said, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.” Tears came from her nose as from her eyes; she tried to sniff them back. Her entire face, swollen and red, was wet. She wailed, “Nothing matters. Nothing matters.”
I thought: What shall I do?
I said, “Jean, I must go out for a moment. I’ll be back, I promise.”
She didn’t answer.
In the hotel lobby, my hand shaking, I rang the only person I knew of who could help, Sonia Orwell. She had in fact first introduced me to Jean some years before. I said to Sonia, “Jean seems to be having an attack.” She said she would be there in fifteen minutes. I went back to Jean, who was still moaning, “It doesn’t matter,” but quietly.
Sonia came, said severely, “For God’s sake, David, don’t you know when someone’s drunk?”
She told me to leave Jean to her now.
The next morning I rang Sonia. I said, “I want Jean to know I wasn’t embarrassed and I hope she wasn’t.”
Sonia laughed. She said, “I’m putting Jean in another hotel. Give her a day or two to recover, then visit her. But, please, remember to lower the toilet seat next time.”
•
She was staying now in a suite in a lovely small hotel off the Portobello Road. The windows at the back gave on a garden with big bare trees. Jean, wearing a long blue dressing gown, was sitting in a beautiful chair in the middle of the sitting room.
