Wide_Sargasso_Sea_澡海无边_-_Jean_Rhys.pdfVIP

WIDE SARGASSO SEA By Jean Rhys First published in 1966 第 1 页 共 88 页 / 原版英语阅读网 Part One They say when trouble come close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said. She was my father’s second wife, far too young for him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl. When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where we lived was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past. (My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed – all belonged to the past.) Another day I heard her talking to Mr Luttrell, our neighbour and her only friend. ‘Of course they have their own misfortunes. Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was passed. Some will wait for a long time.’ How could she know that Mr Luttrell would be the first who grew tired of waiting? One calm evening he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always. No agent came from England to look after his property – Nelson’s Rest it was called – and strangers from Spanish Town rode up to gossip and discuss the tragedy. ‘Live at Nelson’s Rest? Not for love or money. An unlucky place.’ Mr Luttrell’s ho was left empty, shutters banging in the wind. Soon the black people said it was haunted, they wouldn’t go near it. And no one came near us. I got used to a solitary life, but my mother still planned and hoped – perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass. She still