She had finally arrived. Early March was a lion and raining hard, a gale whipped the ragged loquat trees until they creaked and gasped. Jessie Flack stood in the cold, narrow hall, a bulging, black leather holdall held firmly in her hand. On the best of days the hall was dark, and now, as the rain beat down on the roof of the porch, a funereal gloom had settled upon it. She had forgotten to leave her umbrella outside; it dripped in a pool at her feet. Rachel took it with a giggle and put it in the stand. Amy observed her from the drawing room. Reggie stumbled through the door, blown in with the force of the wind, accompanied by a committee of brown and shrivelled leaves. Rachel giggled again and sprang forward to scoop them into her apron pocket. Jessie Flack looked about her, surveying the destination she had come so far to see. Weeks of sickness upon the ship had stamped a waxen melancholy on her unresponsive face.
The small square of stained glass beside the door was thick and muddy-coloured, the floor creaked and the portal of the room before her was out-of-true. There was a feeling of shoddy compression in the narrow, panelled hall that she saw would not be alleviated by the house beyond. It was not what she had expected. It could not compare to the big house, Cranage, where she had gone with her mother for an interview. She had expected more of 169 The Bluff. It was too late now to regret such things, it was the opportunity that mattered. Mr Redmore was jovial, full of questions and concern from the moment he had met her at the dock. She had minded her manners, suppressing the excitement, curiosity and horror that filled her simultaneously at her first sight of Japan. It was nothing like she had expected, although what she had expected would be difficult to tell. Mr Redmore, she was grateful to see, would be a generous employer. And if Mrs Redmore was like her mother, she was sure she would be happy with them.
Amy observed her. Her mother had interviewed Jessie Flack and recommended her. She had prepared for an ample, robust-cheeked girl, redolent of health and Somerset. Jessie Flack was thin and wiry, her colour bloodless and blue-veined. Propriety tightened her lips. She was twenty-six, her mother had written, two years younger than Amy. She appeared older; there was no compromise in her face. She would be efficient, Amy thought, capable and quick. She had been in service since the age of sixteen, and her references were good. Amy stepped forward into the hall to welcome Jessie Flack. The children clung to the banisters at the top of the stairs, faces pressed between the bars, watching the scene below.
‘Is her Jekky?’ Tom’s voice asked. ‘Going look after us?’ He was already almost three and in need of Jessie Flack’s discipline. Cathy was an amenable five.
Jessie Flack dropped a curtsey. ‘Ma’am,’ she said. Amy responded with a smile.
There was a small box room adjoining the nursery which they had cleared and converted for Jessie. The children hung shyly about the door as Amy showed her the room.
‘Why, Ma’am, they’re two angels,’ Jessie remarked as Amy beckoned the children in.
Tom bared his teeth. ‘I’m a devil,’ he said defending his reputation. Cathy silently observed with a wary smile. Jessie Flack crouched down to her fat, shiny bag.
‘Here,’ she laughed, drawing out two small brown paper parcels. ‘This is for young Master Tom and this for Miss Catherine.’
There was a satin drawstring bag for Cathy and some handkerchiefs with his name on for Tom. ‘I made them myself for you both,’ Jessie smiled. Tom approached her stoutly in recognition.
‘We been ship. We been Somerset,’ he informed her with swagger.
‘You were too small to remember,’ Cathy accused him, then tugged at Amy’s skirt. ‘My name’s embroidered on my present too,’ she whispered, smiling shyly. Amy left the children crowding round Jessie as she unpacked her trunk upon the bed. She was suitable, there was no doubt.
From that first moment Jessie Flack showed her worth and ability. The children were tidier, more occupied and disciplined. Overnight Tom’s nose ceased to run; Cathy was learning to knit. They reeled off improbable proverbs and the occasional multiplication. Cathy could soon relate bits of Somerset folklore and knew the difference between a house martin and a swallow. Tom allowed his nails to be cut. It was all a relief in the right direction. And Rachel was only too happy to relinquish the children and assume the position of lady’s maid. She no longer needed eyes at the back of her head and had time for the groom in the stables.
Few people brought out their own domestics. For crystal, crockery, fashion or edibles there could be no improvisation, but for native servants who refused to be shaped there was no dearth of tolerance upon the Bluff. There were not many of her kind and station to form a community for Jessie Flack. She must needs be a starveling on the edge of a lush society. Beyond the world of those she served there was not the comfort of her own hierarchy. There was only a cosmos of Japanese servants, heathen, incompetent and incomprehensible, fit only for derision. By them Jessie Flack was held in awe, a peg below her mistress, one of the same strange foreign breed. It was a situation to frustrate and diminish on the one hand and to swell false pride upon the other. Such, Jessie Flack soon found, was her position in Yokohama. Her life was narrow and unregenerative. It was a corridor in which the colour and pulse both above and below were inaccessible.
It was important, Amy realized from the beginning, that she should have a friend. A year before Mrs Phelps had also brought out a nursery nurse from Switzerland – an excellent girl, she had heard. Mrs Phelps, when the position was explained to her, asked them all for tea: Amy, the children and Jessie Flack.
The day was bright and portended well; the first primulas had been seen. Cathy, Tom and the three Phelps children provided in the nursery an animus for exploration between Jessie Flack and Bertha Kaufmann. Amy was satisfied with Bertha’s appearance, she was neat and plumply ingrained with the indissoluble primness of the Swiss. In her round and healthy face her eyes digested things with alacrity. They glittered in a testing way, almost unforgiving. She would not be a bad influence, Amy decided, upon their Jessie Flack. They might do well together.
‘An excellent girl,’ said Mrs Phelps of Bertha, pouring tea beside the fire. ‘Conscientious in the extreme.’ Amy prepared for a tedious hour.
‘You were not at Monday’s entertainment by the Mosquito Yacht Club? Mr Redmore was there, of course. We’ve all remarked how often he’s alone. Were you indisposed?’ Mrs Phelps interrogated.
‘My old malaria,’ Amy lied.
‘Horrid, I’m sure,’ Mrs Phelps agreed, ‘but it’s not wise to leave a man so much alone. Not in Yokohama. And you missed Mr Coghill-Jackson and Mrs Campbell singing “Oh Maid of Witching Grace” from The Artist’s Model.’ Mrs Phelps chattered on. Amy sipped her tea.
‘We’re grateful to Mr Redmore for organizing our protest,’ Mrs Phelps continued.
‘Protest?’ Amy queried, not remembering the fuss about the ending of extra-territoriality, by which law until now each foreign enclave had governed itself.
‘Our protest against the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration. We intend Her Majesty to feel our disapproval of her agreement to the change of law. In less than two years we shall be abandoned to Japanese rule. It’s unimaginable. We’ll have no more rights, not even courts of our own. We shall be at the mercy of the Japanese. Mr Redmore suggested our celebration take the form of commissioning a statue of Lord Kimberly emptying his pockets into the hands of the Japanese. And Mr Cooper-Hewitt suggested any funds left over from the erection go to supplying Japanese pickles and green tea to all British residents.’ Mrs Phelps nodded sarcastically. ‘That would show them in London how strongly we feel.’
It seemed suddenly unendurable. It was all that Amy had escaped through Matthew, closing round her again. Once more her life was a wasteland of similar dinners of similar dishes and similar talk and jokes. The same people passed and reappeared in endless merriment. Each year the same boats came and went. In clubs and committees the same people unwearyingly discussed the same topics and reached the same conclusions. Same. Endless. Endless. The words knocked about in her head; there was no escape. Pleasure was worse than duty. She remembered in contrast the hours she had spent with Matthew.
‘My dear, are you all right?’ Mrs Phelps leaned forward. Amy steadied the cup in her hand.
‘I can see you’re still groggy, you’ve gone quite pale. Should you go home and rest?’ Mrs Phelps inquired in concern. Amy took refuge in deceit. The children and Jessie Flack were recalled to the drawing room.
‘Not going,’ Tom announced in fury, his cheeks growing dangerously red. Behind him Jessie and Bertha were alight with the discovery of complicity. Excitement made them kind, they fussed about the children.
‘Let them stay,’ Mrs Phelps decided. ‘They can return later. Bertha can go with them.’
Amy departed by herself. She urged the rikisha runner to speed, stones spurted up beneath the wheels and clattered on the undercarriage. It was as if the rattling pace could exorcize her frustration. Dr Charles passed her in a rikisha, a black bag on his knee, and waved. At the sight of him impatience bubbled within her again. It was not yet late, she would ride Nikko up to the course at Negishi. Dicky Huckle would be there, hanging about, hoping she would come. Nothing else seemed to stir her but to ride Nikko madly, the wind stinging her face. She was in need now all the time of extremes to make her feel alive. With Matthew the slightest nuance of emotion had been enough to fill her for days.
The light was already fading when she reached the course. Dicky Huckle waited disconsolately, kicking at the turf, a groom rubbed down his pony. She was unprepared for the transfiguration she saw in his face as he caught sight of her. It filled her with a rush of powerful feelings. With the failing light the course, instead of diminishing, seemed to diffuse and expand, it seemed to go on and on. She urged Nikko into a gallop, the evening streamed past. Nikko’s hooves thudded below her, throwing back the track, taking them forward like one creature into the darkening cusp on the edge of night and day. The white shirt of a man riding towards her glowed, he passed and was gone. Trees blurred to a single shape, black against the sky, clouds became ink, spilling, spreading. She soon heard, as she knew she would, the pounding of hooves behind her and the yelp of Dicky’s voice, as if the sound would catch and slow her. She pushed Nikko into a reckless gallop. Her hat blew off in the wind, her laugh echoed about her in the dusk. When she reached the grandstand she waited, and allowed the thunder behind to capture and enfold her.
His breath knotted in his throat. ‘I thought I would not see you today,’ he gasped and held out her hat. In the dusk his face was a pale sphere; the smell of sweating horses rose between them. She knew he was in love with her. She had no right to feel ungrateful, he wished to be of use to her in any way he could. She liked him. His company was unpretentious but sometimes so naïve that she found herself impatient with him. She turned her pony and trotted back the way she had come. Dicky rode beside her, contentment at her presence enough to fill the night. They left the course and the horses clopped together along the Bluff. Dicky insisted he see her home. He stabled his horse at a livery off Camp Hill. It was convenient, he said, now that he had moved to 160 The Bluff. From her bedroom Amy could look across gardens to his window in Mrs Jackson’s boarding house. She knew he had moved to be near her.
As Amy reached home the groom came running to open the stable doors. At the same moment a posse of rikishas clattered up to discharge the children and Jessie, breathless and giggling from their ride. Bertha had accompanied them with the Phelps children, all crammed together into one rikisha. Amy dismounted. Dicky bent forward to catch her hand, his horse snorted and shook its head.
‘Shall you be at the course tomorrow?’
‘Maybe,’ she teased him, irritated suddenly by his insistence. ‘If the weather is good.’ She shook her hand free from his with a laugh and waved it in goodbye. The children were already jumping about her, excited with the horses. She turned to shepherd them indoors and was aware of Jessie and Bertha staring at her with a single, reproachful look. She remembered then that she had left the Phelps’ in a state of supposed ill health.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she remarked, ‘what fresh air can do. I feel completely recovered.’ She turned quickly into the house to hide a sudden wish to giggle.
*
The notes of the piano struck in the echoing room, bright and full of gallop. The heavy thump of children’s feet flattened a path through the polka.
‘Stop!’ cried Miss Fricklesby in distress. ‘We are not elephants, children. We are dancers, fairies on our feet.’ The piano started again. Cathy Redmore pulled a reluctant partner energetically round the floor. Her brother pinched his on the arm, disrupting the dancing again.
Jessie Flack and Bertha Kaufmann sat on chairs along the wall, separate from the Japanese amahs in Miss Fricklesby’s dancing class.
‘Go on,’ urged Bertha, impatient to resume their conversation.
‘He comes in for tiffin when the master is out, or sometimes later in the afternoon. She ties a handkerchief on the upstairs balcony as a signal he can come. I seen her. And they ride, too. In the hills. Alone,’ Jessie whispered.
Bertha nodded knowingly. ‘He’s not the first, that Mr Huckle. Many people are gossiping about her. Before you came there were also other men. Many men. It is true. I heard my mistress speaking with her friends. It was shameful. Women like that, they are mad,’ Bertha pursed her lips in conclusion.
‘She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Who’d have thought it? Oh, the shame. And her family in Somerset so well thought of, so respectable. And the master such a nice man, too. How can he allow it? I’ve only read about such goings-on in novels.’
‘As for Mr Redmore, there are things they say about him too. Of course he is a man and all men are like that, though not my master, I must say. Don’t be so trusting. You should take care in a house like that. You must protect yourself,’ Bertha clarified.
‘The master’s all right. He’s kind. He likes me,’ Jessie said.
‘That’s what I mean,’ Bertha replied.
‘Well, I didn’t mean it like that.’ Jessie was shocked and blushed.
‘You be careful,’ Bertha warned. The piano had stopped, Bertha retied her bonnet. ‘You could lose your own reputation in a house like that.’
Tom appeared suddenly at Jessie’s knee. ‘Come on, Jekky. Finished. Stupid dancing. Stupid Miss Fricklesby.’ Tom tugged at Jessie’s sleeve. She shook him free and stared at Bertha anxiously.
‘What d’you mean? What can I do?’ she inquired, struck suddenly by insinuations she had been ignorant of before. Beside her a window looked out onto the street and a group of squatting, emaciated rikisha runners, their greasy faces wide-boned and grinning. One stood up to urinate against a wall. Jessie Flack looked away in haste, his sudden exposure thumping through her. All at once she hated Yokohama. She longed for England, a place where, whatever might happen, you still knew exactly where you were. People behaved as expected, and even the discomforts of quarters or the idiosyncrasies of employers were reliable in their unchanging familiarity. Here was only an alien land whose ways and speech were incomprehensible. And besides this, in the small, enclosed world that should have been familiar nothing was what it seemed. People who appeared upright and English behaved in unimaginable ways. An earth that looked docile and solid could erupt and crack and kill without warning. A snake could slide from a flowering bush and the sky could darken with vindictive force to smash homes or blow you from a cliff. In good faith and innocence she had journeyed all these miles to this dangerous deception.
‘Come on, Jekky. Let’s go Bluff Gardens now.’ Tom stamped his foot impatiently. Cathy came up with the Phelps children. Jessie and Bertha stood up.
‘You just be careful,’ Bertha hissed.
*
She wore a grey silk dress fitted tight with a neckline so low it made you blush. She was going out to dinner, but it was early yet to change into a dress like that. It meant he must be coming. When she bent, the neckline was enough to incite the male of any age. Her own son reached up a hand from the nursery table to stroke her soft flesh in bewilderment. Jessie Flack pursed her lips.
‘Did Master Tom take the cough syrup, Jessie?’ Amy laughed. The blue of her eyes was dark, almost violet. She looked so innocent, and yet the things that mouth, that body must have done. It made you angry. It made you sick to even think about it.
‘Yes, Ma’am, he drank it like a good boy,’ Jessie replied, her eyes giving nothing. Many men, Bertha had said. She went about with them, alone. Her mouth was wide, the upper lip as full as the lower, always soft, moist and coloured. They never cracked like Jessie’s own lips in the winter, peeled until they were sore. Such things were not a matter of station, they were apportionments of God – or in this case, most clearly, the Devil.
‘Good boy? Yes, course, good boy. Always good boy.’ Tom held up his arms to his mother. In the nursery the setting sun awoke the room and blazed like fire upon the windows of Mrs Jackson’s boarding house, across neighbouring gardens. Amy laughed and picked Tom up. He kissed her, coiling about her like a small monkey.
‘Don’t spoil me, Tom. I’m going out,’ she pleaded.
She tried to put him down, but he clung to her, burying his face in her breast, nuzzling noisily until she ripped him off her in exasperation.
‘When we grow up,’ Cathy announced, withdrawing her attention from a book, ‘the Reverend Percival told us in Sunday School we must wear dresses to our chins. Dresses like you wear tempt the Devil and send you to hell. Can a dress send you to hell, Mama?’
‘Nonsense,’ Amy exclaimed. ‘Old Reverend Percival knows nothing about fashion. Don’t listen to him, my darling.’ She laughed, but Jessie saw a blush heighten her cheeks. You couldn’t deceive a child, Jessie thought. And what an example she set them. Their own mother, the shame of it.
They heard the sudden knock on the front door downstairs and sounds of entry. Amy patted her hair, kissed her hands to them and darted from the room. They stared after her in silence. Slowly Cathy returned her attention to her book.
‘Drink your milk, Master Tom,’ Jessie admonished to establish normality. The sound of Dicky Huckle’s voice came up clearly from the hall. Amy laughed flirtatiously in reply. Then there was the shutting of the drawing room door, and silence once again.
‘Huckle, duckle, muckle, buckle. One, two, buckle my shoe.’ Tom gurgled the words into his milk.
‘Mr Huckle, if you please,’ Cathy instructed. She returned her eyes to her book but did not read, a frown pulled her brows together. Jessie watched them, angry at the harmony Amy’s intrusion had dispersed. She was fond of the children and they were disturbed. Anybody could see that.
‘Huckle, duckle, muckle.’ Tom blew bubbles into his milk.
‘Master Tom,’ Jessie warned.
‘Going see Buckle my shoe,’ Tom suddenly decided and scrambled off his chair, scuttling from the room before Jessie could catch him. She did not hurry. She let him go, shouting after him, following, but short of a pace that would intercept. She let him reach and open the door of the drawing room.
It was darkening, the small, low lamps reflected. They faced the mirror together, their backs to Jessie. She saw their faces, side by side within the glass. The man’s hands were upon the woman’s bare shoulders, clasping them, her head swung back against him. Her neck and that deep vee of naked flesh, spreading fuller and lower and softer than ever in the diffused light, seemed to overflow. Jessie Flack could not take her eyes from Amy Redmore’s brimming, luminous breast. The room fell away around the two people before the mirror. Anger filled Jessie. It seemed to screw up into a tight ball every cell within her body. Many men, Bertha had said. Many men. The words echoed in her head. How could the master allow it?
There was a small carved stone on a velvet ribbon he had tied about her neck. A present. In the glass they admired it. Amy Redmore smiled at Dicky Huckle, the soft mouth opening, spreading, enticing him. Her body arched against him, her perfume filled the room. She laughed in a low, soft sound at the back of her throat, an animal sound. She had that elusive power, the command of men. She was naked always in their eyes. It was the Devil at work within her. The man dropped his head to kiss the warm hollow of her neck, gently, briefly. Jessie let out a cry. Dicky Huckle’s hands fell quickly to his sides. Tom rushed into the room.
‘One, two, buckle my shoe.’ Tom danced about. ‘Go away, I hate you, Buckle, silly muckle,’ Tom screamed.
Amy turned to Jessie who stood, thin and stricken, in the doorway. ‘Take him away. How dare you let him come here!’ She hissed like a full, white-breasted swan disturbed upon her nest. Jessie scooped him up and left the room. Amy slammed the door upon her.
*
It was silent. They were not yet back. The children slept, Jessie lay upon her bed. The blood throbbed through her when she remembered the image of them before the mirror. She sat up, holding her head, her chest gripped by something hard. Many men, Bertha had said. The things she must have done, wicked as a whore. Jessie got up and drank down a glass of water. The mirror before her threw up her thin face like a scar upon its spotted surface. Her face was not one that mirrors warmed to; they did not expand to greet her as they did Amy Redmore. She had made mistakes, she had even sinned, thought Jessie, taking account of her life, but she had never yet lain with any man and never would like a common whore. She stood up and ran a hand across her forehead. If only the image of them, so ripe it had filled the room, would leave her. She opened the door and went onto the landing. The house was still, the stairwell dark; a lamp burned in the hall below for the Redmores’ return. The pendulum of the grandfather clock knocked back each minute; they would not return for hours. Jessie opened the door of Amy’s room.
Rachel had turned back the bed and put on a low lamp. She had spread out the nightgown with its full lace yoke and satin buttons. There were embroidered silk slippers upon the floor, side by side, waiting. Silver brushes, bottles of perfumes, a glass bowl of dusting powder, Jessie picked up and examined each in turn. From the wardrobe came the smell of lavender bags and the obsessive power of silk, spangled and patterned, worked or thin as water, that had offered her up from within its soft swathings to whichever man she chose to spread herself beneath. Jessie Flack clenched her fist and tore a dress from its hanger, a soft fall of gauze, a dress like she had never worn, the apparel of another race. She held it up before her. It fell loosely against her, its neckline limp and disinterested upon her flat chest. Its colour drained her so that even the mirror seemed impatient to discard her. She stuffed the dress back into the cupboard and sat down on a stool before the dressing table. Behind her in the glass was the huge carved bed upon which Amy Redmore slept with her husband. She who went to other men. He who went to other women. It made no sense and it was shameful. She, Jessie, had been deceived, her priorities violated and, according to Bertha, her own reputation was in danger through these iniquities.
She looked down at her hands and beyond them at the wastepaper basket Rachel had forgotten to empty. A silk handkerchief had been discarded there, because of a tear. Jessie bent to pick it up; a mended tear would not bother her – she had no men to catch. As she retrieved it there fell away the small shreds of a torn-up letter. Jessie Flack picked up and turned over the pieces: ‘… free woman I would …’ she read, ‘… a passion for you … happiness my heart … love … loving …’. Each piece yielded words that made her blood throb anew. Suddenly she laughed and laughed again. She knelt down beside the basket, retrieving the bits of paper in a ragged little pile. Soon she could find no more and placed them in the handkerchief, wrapping it about them.
She turned in dismay as the door opened, but it was only Rachel, giggling, gormless, half-caste orphan Rachel. She had brought a jug of water to leave upon the wash-stand. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked in surprise, but without accusation in her round, heavy face.
‘Never you mind,’ … Jessie said firmly, getting quickly to her feet. ‘Master Tom lost a toy, I was looking for it.’ Rachel’s eyes were upon the silk handkerchief clutched in Jessie’s hand. Jessie waited for the girl to place the jug on the stand and then followed her out, shutting the door behind her.
She undressed and lay down again on her bed, no longer alive with feelings fierce as pain. She had caught the Devil by his tail. She held Amy Redmore in her hand, exposed and observable. It was enough to make her smile in the dark and narrow room.
*
The Bluff Gardens expanded in the sun, the green geography of lawns and paths was sculptural and still. Bertha Kaufmann unwrapped the silk handkerchief, and Jessie turned her body upon the seat to shield them from the amahs squatting on the grass. Cathy and Charlie Phelps bowled hoops about the bandstand, Tom crouched with Mary and Eliza Phelps to examine a dead bird.
‘And then … there they were as Master Tom threw open the door. I could scarce believe my eyes. Oh the shame of it. Nearly naked she was in that dress – flaunting herself, tempting him.’ Jessie shut her eyes.
‘And the child, he saw too, all of this?’ Bertha determined. Jessie pursed her lips and nodded.
‘It is very bad. Very dangerous.’ Bertha shook her head. She turned over the bits of paper on her lap, quickly matching their ragged edges, her head on one side. Jessie looked anxiously at her impassive face.
‘It is good you found this,’ Bertha reflected at last. ‘It will be a useful thing to have in your hand. For who is knowing what may happen in a house like that? We must know exactly what it says. I will keep it. I will put it together. You cannot do these things in that house, you may be seen. You must collect any more you can find. People like us sometimes need such things. Life is not always behaving as we would wish.’ Bertha’s eyes were bright and consuming.
‘Now tell me again,’ she lowered her voice, her detachment breaking for a moment. ‘I must know everything to advise you properly.’ Jessie nodded and began again, the words taking hold of her, growing and embroidering. Her heart beat and her belly contracted in a strange way. She could not stop the words, filling out the image of Amy Redmore and Dicky Huckle before the mirror until, like a sketch beneath a finished painting, the image faded and she was left with the brilliance of her own work of art.
Bertha nodded, her eyes glazed in her solid face. Her voice cracked as she spoke and she stopped to clear her throat. ‘Collect the letters,’ she ordered. ‘And watch. Tell me everything.’
*
It was Sunday, but Tom had no sense of occasion. He smacked a spoon onto his peas, scattering them over the table. He laughed as they rolled upon the floor, Cathy looked at him in disgust.
‘You’ll go back to the nursery if you cannot behave,’ Amy told him. Sunday lunch was a formal meal, the only one for which, with Jessie, the children joined them at the table. Cathy piously opened her mouth for a neatly speared forkful of peas. Tom screamed loudly in defiance.
‘Let the boy alone,’ said Reggie, washing down his beef with a tankard of beer. ‘He’s a Redmore. Needs to break out now and then. I’d do the same if I were molly-coddled like him, by a crowd of women.’ His voice was primed with beer, empty bottles stood upon the sideboard like depleted ammunition.
‘One, two, buckle my shoe.’ Tom blew at a pea until it rolled across his plate. ‘Silly Huckle. Tell him to go away.’ Tom inflated his cheeks until they were round and red. ‘Hate him,’ he shouted suddenly. Amy blushed. Jessie looked up expectantly.
‘Now Tom, Mr Huckle is a friend of the family. You must not be so rude. I’ve told you before. He is always kind to you.’ Amy scolded the child, taking no notice of Reggie’s glare.
‘Can’t pull the wool over Redmore eyes, Amy,’ Reggie snapped. He cut himself a slice of bread and took another spoonful of potatoes. It made him mad the way Amy now coolly defied him. In public she played the devoted wife, nobody suspected the degree of independence with which she ran her life. When he had suggested that compromise, so long ago now in Miyanoshita, he had had no doubt he could still control her. Looking back, it was difficult to determine how she had established the balance of power existing now between them. Sometimes, watching her, he felt a surge of hatred. The ideas she had of leaving him seemed not to concern her now. It was since Armitage’s death that there had been this change.
It had infuriated him the way she traipsed about with the silly fellow, doing those drawings while he filled her head with crackpot ideas. Reggie had put up with the whole thing because so many people appeared impressed. But there had been gossip. He was ready to turn the tables on her and threaten to divorce her himself, then the fellow had suddenly died. Since then Amy appeared resigned to a life at Reggie’s side. She no longer talked of withdrawing herself and her money, and he no longer held her to him with the weapon of the children. It was a strange consolidation of events. The only ammunition each was left with consisted of humiliations.
Reggie looked at Amy across the table. It was difficult to find the old chinks in her armour. She had definitely changed with the death of Armitage. Reggie never let himself contemplate the possibility of anything between them. The thought of that fellow with Amy was simply too absurd. No, it was the ideas he had filled her with that had done the damage. All that telling her about what women should do, how they were equal to men and should fulfil themselves intellectually. All the rot that was now in vogue at home. New Women and their Rights. She had told him about it one day, he had been ready to explode. It was that that had changed her. She was all puffed up with false ideas and no longer knew her place.
And yet there was also something more he could not put a finger on. The sensuality that had drawn him to her originally, before which she had herself been helpless, seemed also changed. It was as if something raw in her had at last distilled. He caught those new depths in her face and was frightened. He had no defence against her. At times he found he desired this new woman as he had never desired the old one, but he kept his distance, apprehensive. However, he was not putting up with the same thing again, with that schoolboy Huckle, even if the fellow might be no serious competition.
‘I told you I don’t want that Huckle here any more,’ he said. ‘What does he come for anyway?’
‘He does not come often. He brings me his newspapers, sometimes a book from the library,’ Amy said. ‘There’s no need to raise your voice or speak like this in front of the children.’
‘I’m not raising my voice, and don’t give me those lies. I don’t want to hear he’s been over this threshold again, do you understand?’ he growled.
‘One, two, Huckle my shoe,’ the child sang. Cathy stopped eating and stared at him and then at her parents.
‘Ssh,’ Jessie told him. ‘Be quiet and eat up and you’ll have a ride on the swings in the Bluff Gardens.’ Tom smiled smugly down at his plate, his lashes touched his cheek. Jessie waited, she saw Reggie’s pale eyes, bright and predatory. Her heart began to beat. Now he would speak. Now Mrs Redmore would get all that was coming to her.
Amy was silent, she appeared unconcerned. ‘He bores me,’ she declared, turning over apples in a dish, choosing the one that pleased her. She hated these scenes in front of the children and Jessie. She tried by her casualness to defuse the situation.
‘He’s just a youth,’ Reggie sneered. ‘It’s what I’ve always called him.’
‘He’s inoffensive; he admires me.’ Amy smiled, disposing easily of Dicky’s adoration. It was a relief and a clear advantage, she decided, to have no emotional investment in one’s lovers.
Reggie reached forward for his beer. ‘Can’t stand the little squirt, as I’ve told you before,’ he snorted contemptuously. Beer glugged down his throat until the glass was drained. Amy shrugged the comment away; she began to peel an apple with a slender silver knife.
‘I hear Mrs Bolithero is back in town and will rattle the boards of the Gaiety again.’ The sun flashed upon the knife. ‘I don’t know what you see in her. She is so loud and vulgar.’
‘I like vulgar women,’ Reggie replied, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘I’m vulgar myself. Nothing wrong with a bit of vulgarity. It’s the saving of the world. I shall ask her to dinner one evening.’ His eyes held Amy’s testily.
Jessie twisted her hands in consternation, unable to evaluate what she heard. It was like trying to piece together a puzzle in which half the parts were missing. She was conscious of disappointment. It seemed that Mr Redmore was aware of the visits to his home of Mr Huckle in his absence. And it seemed there was dubiousness in his own life that Mrs Redmore was aware of and that they openly discussed. Jessie’s head buzzed with the shock of it all. The Redmores practised nothing more than a diseased parody of marriage. She must be even more careful than Bertha had warned. Across the table a rope of apple peel fell unbroken from Amy’s knife. Jessie scrutinized her face and found it unmarked by any shame. She was in a world whose depths she feared she could not even gauge.
*
It had rained all night and was still wet. A wind shook the loquat trees and whined in the cracks of the windows. Clouds streamed across the sky, a mist obliterated Mount Fuji. Soon Amy heard the bell and turned as Dicky entered the room, holding out her hands to him. He closed the door behind him. Almost immediately it opened again and Jessie appeared.
‘Ma’am, excuse me. Did Master Tom leave his toy train here?’ Jessie had not waited after she knocked. Dicky started back, releasing Amy’s hand from his lips. At the door Jessie scanned the situation. Amy turned upon her angrily and the girl backed from the room with a nervous giggle.
‘She does it purposely. She spies on me to chew it over with that prim puss Bertha. Wherever I turn, I find her. I can’t stand it any more,’ Amy said.
‘You can imagine in her eyes how it looks,’ Dicky replied. ‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble.’
‘I’ll speak to her,’ Amy decided.
‘You must be careful. Don’t upset her; it’s you who are vulnerable. If she talks you’ll suffer.’ He took her hand again. ‘My worry is only for you. Perhaps we should meet in the hills, or on the course.’
‘Yes, it would be better. Reggie’s in one of his moods; he won’t hear of you visiting the house much more.’ He still held her hand. She did not want his touch – she felt no desire, he seemed to her like a brother. But she could not escape a benevolent obligation to the devotion she knew she inspired. He would come only as near as she let him. And the little she let him was, she felt, due as reward for such unassuming fidelity. He seemed transparently grateful for her patronage. He sent her letters every day to consolidate in his absence all that he confirmed by his presence. She replied to these letters in their set vein but without the weight of sentiment he infused so heavily into his ink. He had begged her dramatically to burn them, but instead she tore them up and tossed them into the wastepaper basket. Had the letters touched the substance of her, relighting the mystery she had known with Matthew, she would have burned them, burned herself.
Amy waited by the window when Dicky had gone. She had already summoned Jessie. She heard the door close, Jessie cleared her throat. Amy turned and saw that the woman was fixed with a pert expression, as if she would brazen it out.
‘I will have no more of this,’ Amy told her. ‘Master Tom will stay in the nursery when I have guests. And so will you, Jessie. So will you.’
‘But ma’am, I came only to look for his toy,’ Jessie said, widening her eyes.
‘A toy that wasn’t there and never had been,’ Amy replied.
‘And it is difficult to restrain Master Tom, ma’am,’ Jessie informed her self-righteously. ‘Both the children are upset. They don’t like, if I may say so, ma’am, to see a strange man so often in the house. And it is not right, ma’am,’ she said suddenly, stepping boldly towards Amy, her face alight with a fierce expression. ‘In the name of God, it isn’t right that he comes so often to the house. People will talk, ma’am. You know what people are.’
‘There is only you to carry tales to our foreign community,’ Amy told her.
‘I don’t carry no tales, ma’am.’ Jessie stepped back, having said what she wished to say. Amy could see her already in a huddle with Bertha Kaufmann at the dancing class or in the Bluff Gardens, gorging themselves upon the scraps of her life. Two lonely, voracious, sharp-beaked birds, pecking, pecking. The monstrousness of it consumed her.
‘People might believe Mr Huckle comes here for you Jessie. You must watch your reputation. If there were to be talk I most certainly think it more likely to be about you than me.’ Amy was grateful for the words that came so unpredictably to her rescue. ‘And if such things ever reached your parents’ ears, Jessie, just think how they would feel.’
‘Ma’am, you wouldn’t …’ Jessie Flack drew back, stung. The insinuations she had tossed so smugly at Amy shrivelled to insignificance, she gasped and fled the room. Amy pursed her lips to hide her satisfaction. The woman had needed to be shown her place. But she found her heart was beating and the image of Jessie’s complacency did not fade immediately. She left the room and walked slowly up the stairs.
The dark, narrow stairwell was cramped and steep. Since Matthew’s death the depressing house seemed to tighten unbearably about her, like a chrysalis, she must burst. Its memories were full of painful learnings she felt ready to discard. There was a terrible restlessness building within her. She wanted another life, a life of her choosing and her own making, a life in which to bloom. Walter Landor had gone to Shanghai but would soon return to Tokyo, he would be rooted for some time in the country. She would persuade him to give her painting lessons. She wanted to stretch beyond the tiny universe of a delicate illustration. She wanted a world of colour and light; the reflection of her own expanding self.
She had set up a table on the glassed-in verandah upstairs. On it she had spread her paints and drawing board, the paper pinned to it. She would have an exhibition eventually; nothing would deter her. There was no reason, if circumstances and her own will conspired, for her to be any less than Edwina May. Fate had resigned her to Yokohama; it was destined to be her firmament. The question she saw now was not how to escape it, but how to turn her life to her own advantage. And as these thoughts consolidated, it no longer seemed imperative to be rid of Reggie. She had no one else she wished to go to, no alternatives awaiting her. And Reggie had his strengths; before a devious world he was an adequate protector. He was what he was, and to many it was enough.
The acceptance of these thoughts alone seemed already to change the balance between them. She realized now that nothing in their material life would alter unless she took matters into her own hands. Reggie had not the means. She wrote to her father explaining the need for a bigger house, asking for some of her money. He replied that two thousand pounds would be sent if the deeds of the new house were in Amy’s name. To this Reggie quickly agreed, delighted with her sudden financial participation in their lives. Cashing in on her mood, he suggested they think of reorganizing their status in Yokohama.
‘It’s time now, Amy, to go into silk or tea. There’s no further headway at the club. We need a business of our own. And I would eventually pay you back. I won’t be beholden to a woman, even my own wife.’ He was respectful suddenly of her power.
She wrote then to her Uncle Horace, who was her main trustee. It was silk Reggie finally decided on, buying into a partnership in Yokohama. It would take some months to finalize the negotiations, but their future seemed assured. Reggie was ecstatic. The money seemed to free them both. They had ridden to the course and raced each other beyond it like children through the hills. He had pulled her from her horse at last and kissed her in a manner she had not known him do for years.
*
The curtains were drawn; a greenish light filled the room. It was hot and sticky, she wiped sweat from her neck with a towel. Outside, from the Bluff, sounds carried into the room, detailed and clear. She was almost better. If only there was a way to eradicate malaria forever. Dr Charles had urged her to try arsenic again for these debilitating bouts of the disease, but she had stuck to quinine. Arsenic left her depressed in a way she wished to avoid. She would try a change of air up at Miyanoshita as they always did at this horrid, humid time of year. She could take the arsenic later, if Miyanoshita was no help. She did not know how Reggie took the stuff with such impunity, throwing back bottles as he did.
Each day Reggie reached out to the sideboard after breakfast, tilting back dangerously on the rear legs of his chair, stretching for the tiny bottle. He took arsenic like a digestive, he did not even measure it, but poured it freely into a glass of water. A bottle did not give him more than five doses. When she considered the minute amount Dr Charles prescribed for her, two or three drops at the most, she was overcome with awe for Reggie’s magnificent tolerance. Since that terrible time in Sungei Ujong she had never again had to dose him herself. He procured his arsenic as he had there, secretly, free of doctors and prescriptions. He had his sources, had his ways, for amounts of the quantity Reggie demanded could not be openly prescribed or bought by him any more than they could be openly sold by any reputable chemist. And he still kept for severities a stronger stuff, that autocrat of potency, solid white arsenic. But where and how he got the arsenic, or even when he took it, she never asked.
Amy turned her head on the pillow. She must try and sleep. Mrs Bolithero was coming to dinner; Reggie had carried out his threat. She had returned to Yokohama from San Francisco for the spring season, and been booked for the autumn in Tokyo, she was staying through the summer. There was no getting rid of her. She was just as vulgar as Reggie demanded, her big, round, snub-nosed face aflame with paint, aflare with nostrils, perspiration filling her cleavage, but he could not get his hands upon her. She had found a rich, if elderly, patron in Mr Buchanan, the widower manager of the Mercantile Bank. On his account she was installed at the Grand, jewels hung about her.
‘He’s impotent,’ raged Reggie. ‘Semi-fossilized.’
‘She’s clever,’ Amy had shrugged. ‘Money’s all she wants.’
‘She’s lusty,’ Reggie replied, his expression piqued. He exhaled his cigar. Its odour thickened in the room, indicative of that impenetrable, impenitent masculine cosmos that set all the rules of her life. Amy controlled her irritation. He was a mediocre man, his tastes were lowbrow, his pleasures simply gratified and superficially conceived. He was one of those men the world produces in excess of its needs. And yet she had married him, was married to him still. Sometimes now they came together, meeting as if in a no man’s land between their separate lives; occasional lovers, occasional friends in a now inexplicable menage, distorted, distasteful and yet as involuntary as a carbuncle on a toe.
Strangest of all, she realized now, was that had she ever married Matthew, or been free to consolidate a relationship with him, she would be living in exactly the manner she was living in now with Reggie. With different words Matthew had demanded the same conditions. That she live without a sense of possession, freed to her life as he lived his, their obligation on a different level from the mundane fidelity of the body. She sighed and closed her eyes again. Her head ached with bitter complexity. Such freedom, she felt suddenly, uncommitted and permissive, was as narrow a trap, in its airy way, as the conventional obliquities of marriage. What she would have gained with Matthew, and what she must endeavour still to gain without him, was the potential of her mind. That, she saw, was the only freedom that offered her any growth. Her soul would be her own to dispose of then, and experience of any order enriching rather than eroding. Meanwhile, before that splendid day there was Mrs Bolithero to entertain. And she must ask Reggie about the absence in her account of the usual half-yearly transfer of money she expected at this time. It was already the end of June. The shadows widened on the ceiling, Amy Redmore slept.
*
‘How could you?’ she stormed. ‘How can you stand there and tell me that?’
He looked at her defiantly, sullen with guilt. ‘What was I to do? I was put on the spot, I felt sorry for her. There was no other cash to hand. She’ll pay it back.’
‘Sorry for her? Put on the spot? You thought you’d bed her with my money,’ Amy said, keeping her voice low, suddenly remembering Jessie upstairs. Anger was so palpable in her that neither Reggie nor even Mrs Bolithero was adequate to absorb it. He did not apologize, but turned to the brandy on the sideboard and the familiar veil of drink.
The money was sent out by her father twice a year. When they married it had been settled with Reggie that from this money he should give Amy enough for her needs, and the rest was his to use at his discretion. Last year, at her urging, he had opened a separate account in her name, depositing her portion there as it arrived. She was free to draw it then as she wished, but this month had shown no credit. She knew from her father’s last letter that the money had been sent as usual to Reggie. And now he admitted loaning the whole amount to Mrs Bolithero, to clear her of debts she dare not reveal to Mr Buchanan of the Mercantile Bank.
Amy remembered Mrs Bolithero at her table only hours before, consuming roast beef and a chocolate mousse with macaroons upon it. She had not ceased her meaningless chatter even as she chewed, her mouth elastic, just as on the stage. A mosquito had got beneath her skirts and there at the table, without discretion, she had lifted up her petticoats with a scream, wriggling about as if she was having a seizure. The men at the table, inebriated as ever, had egged on her efforts, leaving their chairs, crowding around to support her frenzied revelations. She flashed plump calves over little laced boots, she bent and spilt her décolleté amply upon her knees, searching for the monster.
‘Got him,’ yelled Mr Cooper-Hewitt, salaciously pinching a thigh held wide beneath her skirts as she tore at herself anew.
Mr Figdor, laughing uncontrollably, lowered himself upon his knees. ‘Can I be of assistance to you, madam?’ he croaked, and collapsed upon the floor. Mr Ewart thumped the table and bounced upon his chair.
Even then, Amy felt furious to have lent her home and hospitality to such a circus of banality. But now to know that that virile, sweating little woman had already devoured her money and had been sitting across the table, replete with its advantage, was more than she could tolerate. She walked from the room and slammed the door on Reggie, still mixing his drink at the sideboard.
*
‘I’ve had enough. Enough!’ Amy said angrily.
‘Calm down. I see no need for you to take it out on me,’ Mabel replied. Amy paced about a tatami room of the Maple Club. They were early and were waiting for the Baroness d’Anethan and her party to join them.
‘Sit down,’ Mabel ordered. She was already arranged uncomfortably, Japanese-style, on a cushion on the floor. ‘Why should I have to suffer this agony of the legs alone?’ She had persuaded the Baroness to include Amy in her party. It had been kind of the Baroness and even kinder of herself, thought Mabel. She had not bargained for Amy in so violent a mood. She had the beginning of a migraine and was not inclined to play guardian angel.
‘You’re making an earthquake, strutting about like that. Listen to everything shaking,’ Mabel scolded. Amy continued to pace the floor, the flimsy walls rattled about her.
‘But how could he do it? All my allowance to the wretched woman. And after what I’ve done for him – even buying him into a partnership,’ Amy fumed.
‘I must say his taste in women is not up to Patrick’s,’ Mabel commented. ‘Except for yourself, of course,’ she added hurriedly.
‘Oh, what a fool I’ve been.’ Amy shook her head. Mabel did not contradict.
‘You’ve no proper notion, to my way of thinking, of how to handle Reggie. He can read you like a book. I’m sick to death of telling you the same things, again and again,’ Mabel snapped, and shifted painfully. ‘Oh, how do people manage to sit like this?’
‘You’ve arranged things so well with Patrick. He never gets the better of you.’ Amy stopped in the middle of the room and turned accusingly upon Mabel.
‘I’ve no magic tricks,’ Mabel waved her hands in denial before her. ‘Although I wish I’d one for my poor head right now. You’re making me ill. Sit down.’ Amy obeyed, taking a grey silk cushion emblazoned with the maple emblem of the restaurant, a popular Japanese inn. ‘The Baroness is determined to have a giddy whirl with Japan. She deliberately seeks out all these places. I’ve a mind not to join her next party. I can’t stomach Japanese food.’ Mabel pulled a face and looked hard at Amy. ‘I’ve told you before, Patrick is a remarkable man. We have a perfect understanding.’
‘I don’t need that kind of salt in my wounds,’ Amy retorted.
‘Oh, my!’ said Mabel. ‘Time you watched your tongue again. It was never so sharp when I first knew you.’ Amy did not smile; her face was set.
Amy looked exhausted, thought Mabel, she allowed her emotions to mould her like a piece of wax. You never got the better of life with an attitude like that. Experience drowned you, and was, besides, a disaster to the skin. Mabel was careful that even a smile left no lasting wrinkle. Mabel remembered the look on Amy’s face during those months with Matthew; it returned to stab her sharply. She did not understand why she should be envious. Yet envy was what she felt. Neither Patrick nor Douglas had ever illuminated her as had Amy’s love for Matthew. Mabel shut her eyes and tried to imagine herself consumed by the pulse that had filled Amy. She felt not a thing, and knew in the moment she opened her eyes that life might have played a dirty trick and entirely passed her by. But she put this thought from her as it formed; miscalculation was not her habit.
‘You should ask Dicky to advise you about your banking affairs. Use a little strategy. Pull the ground from under Reggie’s feet. He needs a shock to bring him into line. It’s time you learned some cleverness,’ Mabel advised. ‘Now don’t bother me any more. My head is getting worse.’
Amy sat before the lacquer table, a bowl of green tea cupped in her hands. Mabel continued to observe her. That strange light had gone from her face with Matthew’s death, but as metal must go through fire to produce a fine sword, thought Mabel, so in Amy the burned-out turmoil had left a different woman. The disturbance so deep within her had distilled its own knowledge. Mabel found herself feeling at a disadvantage before this new clarity of vision she detected in Amy Redmore.
There was a clatter along the corridor and the doors slid open for the Baroness and her party of friends. Mrs Kirkwood and Madame Musin had brought small padded stools to sit upon to save them from the floor. And the Baroness, who refused to remove her shoes, had covered her feet with white linen bags devised for such occasions, to the horror of the Maple Club.
‘It’s going to be such fun,’ said the Baroness when they were seated and waitresses began to serve the meal. ‘I’ve told them to send in some geisha to dance a maple dance. Oh dear, I really cannot abide seaslugs. I’ve always avoided them, however formal the banquet.’ The Baroness looked down at the bowl before her and poked at its contents with a lone chopstick.
‘They say in Japan if you eat something you’ve never eaten before you’ll live an extra seventy-five days,’ Amy laughed.
‘Oh, goodness,’ exclaimed the Baroness. ‘Even for an extra one hundred and seventy five I doubt I could swallow this. But I didn’t know that. How interesting,’ she smiled.
‘There is nothing Amy cannot tell you about Japan. She’s a veritable store of knowledge,’ Mabel drawled, and gave Amy a withering look.
‘We did enjoy your drawings in poor Mr Armitage’s last book,’ said the Baroness. ‘Are you working towards an exhibition? You really should, you know.’
‘Maybe,’ said Amy. ‘It is what I would like.’
*
Amy examined the hut. Dilapidation had exposed itself obscenely since she last came. Walls crumbled, divulging innards of yellow clay and straw, beams sagged. House martins nested near the ceiling and flew in and out of the room. Their wings beat above Amy, as if to fan the memory of another bird before in this same hut.
‘I suppose I’ve shocked you,’ said Amy, watching Dicky closely. His face was aflame with more than the heat. ‘I’ve no right to burden you with my problems, but who else can I turn to? And as you see, I need to know about my rights concerning banking.’
‘I’m glad, honoured really, that you should confide all these intimate things in me.’ Dicky wiped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘It is terrible to hear. I had no idea. My heart bleeds for you, poor Amy.’ He shook his head sorrowfully.
It was hot, no breeze blew through the paper windows, shredded like torn linen where anything remained. There was a smell of bird droppings and animal excrement, of dust and disintegration. Dicky’s face was solemn, Amy looked about her. She felt a different person from the one who had last entered this place to meet Guy le Ferrier. She traced the distance she had come. Nothing could eradicate the remembrance of Guy le Ferrier sitting where Dicky now sat in this disused hut. Nor of what she had once so avidly determined upon a mat, now non-existent, across the splintered floor.
It was strange, she thought, how actions echoed ceaselessly, like reverberations in a chamber trapped beneath the earth. When reality was lost and gone, the echoes still remained. She remembered suddenly the old priest in the temple she had gone to with Matthew; she remembered the sun on his worn, darned robes and the golden, deified cat. ‘That which we are is the consequence of that which we have been,’ he had said. And the thought was not so different from the thoughts that filled her now. She sat down beside Dicky and watched a row of ants endlessly trail across the room.
‘My poor darling,’ Dicky murmured.
‘Oh, don’t call me that,’ she said, irritated by his mournful tone. Dicky looked hurt.
‘But he ill-treats you. How have you lived with it all so long? He’s worse than a cad. You should have told me before,’ said Dicky.
‘How could I? I’m only telling you now because I’ve no option. It gives me no pleasure,’ Amy replied. She wished Dicky would get over his shock and begin to think constructively.
‘How can any man who has you even think of infidelity?’ Dicky was incredulous. ‘It’s shameful.’
‘Oh, that.’ Amy laughed at his innocence. ‘There was never a moment from the day we married that he was faithful to me.’ Dicky shook his head again, trying to digest it all. Even after telling him, Amy’s anger with Reggie did not abate.
‘There was also a child, a bastard of his, born just before we married. I didn’t know until later. He persuaded me to support it under a threat of blackmail from the woman. It died when it was three, otherwise I suppose I’d be paying for it now,’ Amy told him bitterly. He looked at her in disbelief.
‘Dear God,’ he muttered, then spoke up. ‘Of the arsenic, I know. He told me himself some years ago one evening at the club.’ But I just thought he boasted. I did not think it true.’
‘I am so used to it, I never even think about it. It seems of no more importance than taking cod liver oil or sarsaparilla. It is not uncommon, I believe,’ Amy said, drawing thoughtful circles with a straw upon the floor.
‘Nor so common, either,’ Dicky remarked. ‘His treatment of you amounts to extreme cruelty, you know. If you wished, I’m sure you could prove that in a court of law. It’s obvious he married you for money and cares nothing for you in his heart.’
She shrugged. Dicky took her hand suddenly. ‘And now to give even your small allowance, your only independence, to this dreadful woman. I cannot get over it.’ He was genuinely shocked.
It was not unpleasant to Amy to receive his sympathy, or to share her discontent at last.
‘And is he brutal? Has he ever hurt you?’ Dicky asked, his eyes uncertain of the responsibility he was inviting.
She nodded mutely, not wishing to speak open lies. A man of Reggie’s temperament was capable, once provoked, of any violence. He could just as well have beaten her; it was a miracle he had not. The distinction then of what Reggie might have done and what he had not seemed uncertain enough to justify her manipulation of the truth. It was necessary to allow Dicky to think upon these lines. She needed his collusion.
‘You must help me. I know nothing of banking or my rights in any matter. Think of something, Dicky,’ Amy repeated.
‘It is easy, really,’ Dicky suddenly decided. ‘I shall write to the Chartered Bank in London, to their head office, instructing them on your behalf to remit your portion of the money directly to your account in Yokohama, and the balance to Mr Redmore as is usual. I shall also write to your father that he must confirm this officially with them.’ Dicky spoke authoritatively, decided now upon his role, inescapably, in the matter.
‘Can it really be done so easily?’ she asked in amazement. Dicky’s sudden command cut through her frustration. She could not battle on her own without a delegate in a male-processed world. If she wrote herself it was likely, given the unreasonable connivance of that world, that the authority to direct her own affairs would be referred to Reggie for confirmation. Now Dicky would see it was done. How useful he was, how devoted he was, how unassuming and endearing. She put out a hand in gratitude, leaning forward to touch his cheek. She allowed him to take her in his arms and kiss her on the lips. He was sweating, and his face was unpleasantly damp against her. He grasped her to him tightly, pleading with the press of his hands for everything she denied him. She drew back then, by the formality of her body rejecting anything more. It would not be unpleasant later to teach him all he wished to learn, but not now. And Dicky expected nothing. He had fine and gentlemanly principles that she could not afford to break. At this moment she needed him not as a lover, but as a friend and confidant. She suspected he was still a virgin, if that were possible in Yokohama.
Dicky wiped his flushed face with a handkerchief. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. It won’t happen again. You must think me no better than him,’ he apologized.
Over his shoulder she looked at the remnants of the straw mat where she had lain with Guy le Ferrier, and was surprised even now at the audacity she had shown on that day. She had projected the considerable force of her will then to secure herself a future. Now, within this same hut, in a subtler way, she manipulated Dicky equally to secure a future of different needs.