Smile Please by Jean Rhys

Author:Jean Rhys
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241285558
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-11-03T04:00:00+00:00

Leaving Dominica

This is the last conversation I can remember with my father. Though I cannot of course put it down word for word, I can remember the gist of it. He called me into his consulting-room and told me to sit on the sofa. The first thing he asked me was whether I liked my Aunt Clarice, and I answered cautiously that I wasn’t sure she liked me very much. He said, ‘Clarice doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. You have to get to know her.’ I said, ‘But I’ll be going to England.’ – ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s just the trouble, you’ll be going to England.’ Then he said briskly, ‘Of course it’s going to be very different, but you’ll have to get used to that.’ Then: ‘If you’re very unhappy, or want anything very much, you must write directly to me. But don’t write at the first shock or I’ll be disappointed in you.’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said he would be going up to the club and would be late for dinner, and would I tell my mother.

He came with my aunt and myself as far as Bridgetown, Barbados, where we caught the ocean boat. When we said goodbye, he hugged me tightly but I said: ‘Goodbye, goodbye’ very cheerfully, for already I was on my way to England. Down in the cabin which I shared with my aunt I saw that the little coral brooch which I was wearing had been crushed. I had been very fond of it; now I took it off and put it away without any particular feeling. Already all my childhood, the West Indies, my father and mother had been left behind; I was forgetting them. They were the past.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.