The Painted Cage (18 page)

The first thing was to have a bath. Out of respect for Western
mores
the bathrooms of the Fujiya were not the gregarious, communal affairs of the Japanese; privacy and decency were upheld. The water felt alive, flushing the body of fatigue. Amy slept early, hoping Guy le Ferrier would not appear to disturb her.

The next morning Mabel was out of sorts after a
sleepless
night; and refused to leave her bed. Nothing was to be seen of the men. Ada and Enid had walked into the village. It was early; the sun was already hot but devoid of Yokohama's humidity. Amy had brought her Murray's Handbook, which informed her that the hill behind the bachelor quarters, Sengenyama, was worth a short climb for its splendid view. She set off on a path behind the hotel. On the verandahs of the bachelor quarters the men still lazed in pyjamas behind newspapers and drinks. A steep slope of woods enclosed her suddenly, dark and cool, full of the sound of waterfalls. There was the perfume of pine needles and dank, rotting leaves. The path wound up steeply, and she slipped sometimes on the roots of trees snaking underfoot. She was agile and determined, used from childhood to wandering the woods of Cranage; it was as if she were a child again. Happiness filled her.

Murray's Handbook said there was a deserted tea house some way up from where she could find a view. She pushed on; her legs ached, her muslin blouse stuck wetly
to her. Mabel would think she was mad, scrabbling about like this. Amy laughed. The path followed a brook and brought her into a grassy clearing. The sun beat upon her again; it was silent and deserted. She threw herself down on the hot ground beside the stream, breathing hard. The sun burned her eyelids, spreading through her veins. After a while she sat up, pulled up her petticoats, took off her shoes, peeled down her stockings and sank her feet into the stream, wriggling her toes in the coolness, delighted. She lay back again, her face to the sun, her feet still in the water, her skirts high above her knees. Her skin felt hot and dry, but she did not care. It was wonderful. She closed her eyes again, happy in a way she could not remember in the last few years.

The noise of movement penetrated slowly; she took no notice until it came again. She sat up to face a foreign man, crouched, half-hidden behind a clump of shrubs. She pushed down her skirts in horror. The man looked at her without concern. A pipe curled down like a long brown tongue from the corner of his mouth.

‘
Ligularia
prewalskii.
Saxifraga.
Clematis
Williamsii
,'
he said, taking the pipe from his mouth. Amy looked at him blankly. Was the greeting Polish or Greek?

‘What?' she said, forgetting all manners. She recognized the man now. Mad Mat, Matthew Armitage. How long had he been here? Had he seen her take off her stockings? Distress flamed in her at the thought.

‘
Clematis
Williamsii
,'
Matthew Armitage said again. ‘A native of your part of Yokohama, grows well upon the Bluff. Named after C. Wells Williams, Perry's interpreter, who discovered it. He slipped off ship in 1854 for a stroll upon the Bluff – no houses then of course, wild as you could wish. He found it along with two unknown species of fern. Capital botanist, Wells.' He spoke through his pipe, pointing to a mass of creeper growing up a tree trunk.

‘
Saxifraga.
'
He held out a stemful of small white flowers to her across the narrow brook. She reached forward and took it in confusion, feeling trapped and ridiculous, her feet still in the water, her skirts now wet and bedraggled
about them. She had quickly pushed her stockings out of sight beneath her. She looked down at the flower in her hand.

‘Large herbaceous genus. Three hundred and seventy species of considerable diversity. Lime glands on the leaves of some secrete deposits of dissolved calcium.' He pointed his pipe at the plant she held. ‘You will notice that one or more petals on each flower are longer than the others. Discovered in Japan by Robert Fortune in 1862. Sometimes found in British gardens.' He offered her next a purple daisy. He knelt on one knee, an alpenstock in one hand, a canvas bag on his back, a red scarf about his neck.

‘
Callistephus
chinensis
,
Chinese aster. Introduced into England and the Physic Garden in Chelsea in 1731. Have you seen the Physic Garden?' She shook her head at his question. He looked disapproving, she remembered how he had found her lacking before in Theatre Street.

‘I've never lived in London. How would I know the Physic Garden? I was brought up in Somerset,' she said resentfully. As in Theatre Street it was a strange
conversation,
throwing her into the middle of acquaintance without a formal introduction.

‘Somerset? A country lass. No wonder you so quickly made use of this joyful little brook.' He smiled. She was overcome with horror. He must have been there from the beginning. He had watched her take off her stockings.

‘I do not know all their names,' she argued, to cover her embarrassment, ‘but there are many flowers I
recognize
here, that I saw at home, or have drawn and painted. Some names I know and some I don't, but my
appreciation
is the same.'

‘Ah, you paint, that's interesting,' he replied.

She thought he would use the same condescension as Reggie and Mabel about her painting. She regretted admitting to such a practice.

‘Then I may have misjudged you. And if so I apologize,' he said with a smile. ‘Tell me about your painting.' He changed positions to settle himself comfortably on the
other side of the stream, drawing unhurriedly on his pipe.

‘There's nothing to tell. I paint. That's all. Flowers usually.' She felt awkward. She must get away, but to do so she must take her feet from the stream, revealing more than her ankles, put on her shoes and pull up her
stockings.
This could not be done before a strange, mad man. He appeared in no hurry to leave.

‘I should like to see your sketches and paintings. Would you consent to show me some?' he asked.

‘I've none here,' she said. She could not make him out. ‘Why should you want to see them? I think you're being impertinent,' she added, exasperated.

‘Impertinent? Oh no, dear lady, you misunderstand me.' His expression was of astonishment; he knocked his pipe on a stone, preparing to explain. Before he could speak there was a noise from the slope above. A young Japanese girl burst out from amongst the trees, breathless and laughing. Amy drew back startled. The girl was naked to the waist, and the sun beat on her bronzed skin and dark, loose hair. She wore tight white gaiters, buttoned to the knee, and above the obi her kimono was thrown off to hang limply about her, baring her breasts. In the crook of her arm she held a sheaf of wild flowers. When she saw her audience she laughed, unembarrassed. Three younger children, two boys and a girl, ran up behind her, all half-naked, a mass of bare limbs and flying draperies. They stopped beside their sister at the sight of Amy and Matthew Armitage, then they were gone and the clearing was empty again. Matthew Armitage sat still, his pipe in his hand. Amy looked at him, embarrassed at seeing such nakedness with him, a stranger and a man. Yet the girl had looked beautiful there, like a natural part of the woods.

‘A woodland nymph,' Matthew Armitage said voicing her thoughts. ‘Would that we could all capture in our lives a little of such innocence and joy.' His expression was respectful. Amy relaxed; the stance of shock that propriety demanded was unnecessary.

‘Yes,' she agreed. ‘A woodland nymph.'

‘We'll ruin them, you know, these poor people, inflicting upon their innocence a shame they've never felt. They view the body without prurience in its naked form. They are at one with nature, they see themselves as part of it, obedient to its laws. They do not, like us, feel
themselves
superior, they do not try to harness nature to their whims. They have a respect we have lost or never had. But of course, they are enviously without our concept of sin.'

‘They are not Christian,' Amy said, not knowing what else to say, uncertain of the direction of the conversation.

‘They are, dear lady, as religious as any race I know, as concerned with virtue as they translate it, just as much as us. We do wrong to think that we alone should have a monopoly on God,' Matthew Armitage replied.

She could not answer, could not judge. She knew nothing of their religion, except that it was not Christian. She felt suddenly angry. It was ridiculous, sitting with her feet in a stream, trapped in mad conversation by a mad man. Would he never move, would she ever be free? To take her feet from the stream she had to pull up her petticoats and show him her knees.

‘I was on my way to look at the view,' she said firmly so that he should know their acquaintance was ended.

‘Ah, then we can go together. I too was on my way there, before the
saxifraga
detained me.' He drew
unconcernedly
upon his pipe.

‘But I have to put on my shoes and stockings. I have to dry my feet,' she said. ‘Surely you do not expect me to do so in front of you?' It was farcical. Mabel would have made the man feel less than a louse.

‘My apologies. I thought you were enjoying the stream. I'm unused to women's ways – I live a solitary life.
Sometimes
my manners, I am aware, appear lacking. Forgive me. I shall turn around and you shall tell me when you are ready.' Without taking the pipe from his mouth he swivelled round until his back was towards her.

She gave a sigh of exasperation and drew up her feet, drying them on her petticoat. Behind a bush she pulled
on her stockings and shoes and then came back to the stream.

‘I'm ready,' she told him. She did not see why the objective of her climb should be sacrificed. Strange as he was, he seemed harmless, perhaps even interesting. It would be an adventure to tell Mabel about.

‘It's not far.' Matthew Armitage led the way up the steep slope. He turned to offer a hand at difficult places, but Amy ignored him, scrambling up as best she could. Soon they emerged again into the sun of a small plateau. The teahouse was deserted, a heap of rustic, disused bones, its insides open to the elements. Amy sat down on a weathered bench. Matthew settled himself beside her, taking off his red scarf and mopping his face.

The teahouse stood on a precarious ridge, jutting out over pine-furred slopes. The world appeared in the distance to face them upright, like a backdrop, the details of mountains and towns vivid, the sea glazed and still as glass. The island of Enoshima lay like the hull of a great dark ship; inland Mount Fuji reared up from lower hills. It was a breathtaking view, more like another world than the mundane terrain to which they belonged. Matthew gave a sigh of appreciation.

‘Ah,' he murmured, ‘what imperfect creatures we are.' Amy looked at him, but he did not appear to be speaking to her as he retied the red scarf about his neck. He pulled upon his pipe his expression distant and absorbed. But his silence, instead of shutting her out, seemed to
incorporate
her. Her irritation suddenly faded, she looked at him curiously. For all his strangeness there was something about him that inspired implicit trust. Around the bowl of the pipe his hand was muscular but sensitive, there was grey in his coarse brown hair and beard. His clothes were a combination of textures and colours that a man like Reggie would laugh at, yet he did not look badly dressed, just different. And she felt different with him. She realized Matthew Armitage expected her to have a mind, expected things of her no one else did. She felt suddenly interested in this part of herself that he had taken stock of and she had not.

She looked at the panorama, feeling the pleasure of the moment, trying to see what he saw, feel what he felt, silent beside him in harmony. And slowly she was drawn into the stillness where the concentration of Matthew Armitage seemed to hold her, suspended. Thoughts flowed in and out of her mind and dissolved into
nothingness
. She seemed no longer to observe the view but to be part of it, resting in it, peacefully. Matthew stirred and stretched as if from sleep. He held his face to the sun, then smiled at Amy companionably.

‘Beautiful, isn't it?' he said. Amy nodded. Without
incident
or words the balance between them seemed suddenly changed, an intimacy enclosed them as it would old friends. She felt expanded within herself. She could not understand why she felt different with Matthew Armitage.

‘A perfect place for meditation, don't you think? At the crack of dawn or sunset, with the forces of the day and night awakening or dwindling, converging upon a cusp,' he remarked.

‘Meditation?' she questioned. There was not a thing he said that was predictable or even comprehensible.

‘As practised by Buddhists and Hindus and here by Zen monks. In Japanese they call it
zazen.
'

‘What is
zazen
–
meditation?' she said, trying to remember what her Murray's had said about the strange religions of Japan.

‘A withdrawing into oneself, to a silent centre, to find the true self and, eventually, enlightenment.' He spoke without affectation, as he would about the weather.

‘Enlightenment?' she asked, drawn on by something she could not understand within herself.

‘Knowledge and realization of truth. Or, if it makes it easier, that force within themselves men call God.'

‘Like prayer, I suppose,' she remarked to cover her inadequacy. She felt out of her depth.

‘A little, in a way, if you wish, but really something different. The early Christians knew all about meditation, but later the church got rid of the practice – to their
great loss, I feel.' He smiled disarmingly, scrutinizing her perplexity.

‘I'm afraid it's all a little over my head.' She laughed suddenly, willing to admit to ignorance.