I set my radio to wake me up every morning at a certain time. At the moment, by the time I’m half-awake and dozing my way towards actually getting up I find myself listening to a radio adaptation of a new biography of Jean Rhys. If you don’t know about Jean Rhys you should of course read Good Morning, Midnight and Wide Sargasso Sea immediately because what the hell else are you doing with your life. But suffice to say that (according to this new book) her life was immensely sad, and listening to it whilst I’m trying to get out of bed is almost unbearable.
Christmas day, 1913, was spent alone. Rhys sat in an armchair all morning, looking out on an empty street. At midday, a christmas tree was delivered. A gift from an old boyfriend. Not a good time. She dragged it off down the street towards a cab, determined to donate it to Great Ormond Street hospital — but the next thing she knew, she was back in her empty room without the tree and with a bottle of gin on the the table in front of her. She could not remember what had happened to the tree, nor where the bottle had come from.
