The Painted Cage (29 page)

‘I didn't know, I didn't know,' she repeated.

‘Don't worry too much. Dr Baeltz is clever. Matthew couldn't be in better hands.'

‘How will I know how he is?' she asked.

‘Shall I send you bulletins until he's better?' Walter offered. ‘He'll soon be well, I'm sure.'

‘Yes, of course,' she smiled, controlling herself.

After inspection of the flowers the Emperor and Empress entered the central marquee to receive their guests. It was like a dream to Amy now. Each legation went in turn before their Majesties. She curtseyed when presented, seeing nothing, and walked with difficulty backwards from the tent, past the court ladies and officials and a sea of watching faces.

‘Well, thank goodness that's over,' Mabel remarked. ‘Did you see Madame Lambert tumble over her train? She disgraced the whole French Legation.' Small tables were set about on the grass, they were offered sandwiches of foie gras, caviare and chicken, creams, ices and champagne.

‘Come,' said Walter, who seemed to have taken charge of her. ‘Have a glass of this.' He pressed the champagne into Amy's hands. She drank willingly and the stuff buzzed about in her head. Mabel joined them at the table with Gerald Lowther and his sister. Miss Lowther was tall and stern and appeared not impressed by American
Mabel, but her brother was attentive, his eyes bare and indiscreet.

‘Let me show you the aviaries,' he encouraged Mabel. ‘The Emperor has everything from a Cochin-China hen to eagles. There is a parrot known positively to be one hundred and twenty years old. Possibly more,' he pleaded.

‘A centurion parrot?' Mabel scoffed. ‘I've never heard of such a thing.'

‘Let us go and see.' Gerald Lowther rose from his seat with alacrity. Mabel flashed him a sardonic look and swept off in amusement at his side. Miss Lowther frowned after them in annoyance.

‘Obviously I can't show you the aviaries, but if you will allow me, there is a play going on over there,' Walter offered.

There was no stage, just a ring of chairs about a massive sheet of mats. The actors were made up and dressed in sight of their audience; men with black hoods masking their faces arranged the scenes. The play was strange, full of wild gesticulations and mannered poses, with speech squeezed out like paint from a tube in a strangulated stream. Amy could understand nothing, the effects of the champagne had worn off and her agitation had returned. She could think only of Matthew and how to reach him somehow.

‘That actor there is the famous Danjūro, the Irving of Japan,' Walter said.

Amy observed the small man stamping his way across the makeshift stage. Matthew had mentioned his name. He had been acting in Isezakicho-dori the day they had met through Mrs Easely at the Club Hotel. She felt a new anxiety. Whatever gods there might be, pagan or not, she would pray to them all that night.

Reggie woke her after midnight, the room was filled by a strange, suffused glow. She had only just got to sleep. Far away was the clanging of bells, faint behind the windows.

‘It's a fire,' said Reggie, rousing himself in bed. She pulled herself up beside him in panic. He held her arm.
‘Not here, not at home. Must be down in the Native Town.' He went to the window, looked briefly and returned. ‘Not in the Settlement, over beyond
Motomachi.
No danger to us. Go back to sleep.' He turned on his side and sank once more into an unknowing world.

The glow reflected on the ceiling in a restrained and gentle way. Fear gathered in her. She got up; Reggie did not stir. Putting on a wrap, she went to the window and opened it. Before her the night was like melted wax. The air smelled burnt and dry; below the Bluff the Native Town glowed in an evil way. A sudden unnameable terror streamed through her. She ran down into the dark garden to the fence beneath the loquat trees, shivering with emotion. From here the Bluff dropped away steeply and she could see across the Settlement into the Native Town. It was encrusted with weird splendour, like a piece of fiery lace. The charred silhouettes of timber stood out blackly against the flamboyance, as the fire burst skywards in triumph at each new sacrifice. The air was acrid with smoke which blew across the Settlement to where she stood upon the Bluff.

Sounds came from the elaborate ritual enacted in the distance. She thought she heard the scream of a horse burning amidst helpless human cries. Behind the clanging of fire engine bells were the warning bells from every quarter of the Native Town, tolling like an orchestra, one against another. From the rooftops came the chant of appeasement that the firemen sang to their gods as they worked, sluicing water, standing upon the burning roofs to twirl their massive, sacred wand at the demons of the fire. Sometimes she heard the shouts of the vigilantes patrolling each street as yet untouched, calling for the children. And they came out, lining up nine and ten abreast, names and addresses on labels round their necks, to walk away to safety. When they were gone the business began of salvaging, of piling up carts before the flames swept down, deeper into the wooden town. She had heard that the people behaved with order and calm. They were used to fires, they were used to death, they were used to starting again. She could see in her mind the lurid
glare lighting up the pale, excited faces of the crowds. They swayed in a single mass amongst the orchestra of bells, listening to the screams of the trapped,
immeasurable
in their terror. She stared at the sight, transfixed. And again there was a new burst of magnificence and a faint, thickened cry from the crowds, like the last and desperate spasm of some terrible consummation. She feared, she feared, she feared what might come. What she knew had already happened.

That night Matthew Armitage died.

She held the book in her hand. They had found it packed up with her name upon the envelope, as if ready to give her the next time they met. Walter Landor sent it to her. Matthew's brother and his wife, who at the time of his death were on their way to Japan on the
Empress
of
India,
arrived for the sad business of disposing of his things. He had left a wish to be cremated. This had been done, and his ashes would sail with his brother back to England. There was to be nothing left of him in Japan. She turned the book in her hand. Inside Matthew had inscribed it to her and written a quotation below. She had read and
reread
it:

This, and a legacy of the spirit, was all that was left of him.

Soon it would be Christmas; there was revelry upon the Bluff. But it seemed there was not a single daily act Amy could bring to culmination without the cancer of
disinterest.
Much of the time she sat in a chair and stared at the ceiling; she found it a comforting place. There was silence about her except for the ticking of the clock and the wind in the branches of the trees. The hands of the clock revolved and revolved, pushing down one day after
the next. Her mind was blown of thought. In its void a magic lantern show of the past went round, again and again, untiring of its one monotonous reel. She turned to the clock, and there upon its glass she saw again their bodies, tangled and moving, involved with each other as she had seen them that last day on the face of Matthew's clock, in the midst of the act of adultery. Adultery. All the months behind her, once full and ripe, shrivelled suddenly now to the sourness of a single word. She lay in the dark, unable to sleep, alone in her pain. In her own stillness other people's banalities reverberated. From all sides blared that splendour called enjoyment – a raucous piano, loud laughter, clapping and drunken singing as the Bluff prepared for Christmas.

She sat in the dark bedroom and waited. She had considered the alternatives but found no choice. Life, she realized now, was like that – full of alternatives but never any choice. She had watched the phases of the fire, and now amongst the ash the last embers bloomed half-
heartedly
; the room had cooled. Outside the world was silent with a blanketing of snow, it had fallen since the early evening. The children had screamed with delight and refused to go to bed. They had wanted then and there to go out in it. Tom had struggled free from Rachel and rushed off on determined toddler's legs. He stood in the garden, his face to the sky, mouth open to receive the manna with gleeful, childish joy before being snatched up, a kicking, angry ball of manhood, and deposited inside. In his face she saw herself, but as yet no father; he kept his secret still. And there seemed now little to query, for he was above all his own devilish self,
incorrigible
with charm. Here, in front of the fire, before going to bed he had climbed upon her lap to kiss her with wet profusion. From her knee he viewed himself in the mirror of the dressing table, contemplative for a moment before pointing an accusing finger at the image and then himself.

‘That baby. This Tom. Baby bad. Tom good. Good boy Tom.'

‘Both bad,' Cathy told him firmly from the floor before
the fire, buttoning a nightdress onto her doll, precocious in her perception. Amy regarded her with respect. She seemed no part of herself and even less of Reggie. She was of serious Sidley blood, rejecting in creation Amy's own instability, showing even at that nebulous, seedling stage superior discrimination. Often, before this knowing child, Amy felt in awe. It was for the children that she feared the most in the decision she had taken. It must have some effect upon the psyche to grow up fatherless, especially for a boy. But what else was she to do?

She had refused to go out on New Year's Eve to either the ball at the Grand or the Gaiety or any of the numerous private events. She pleaded indisposition. Reggie shrugged and went alone on a round of hedonistic revelry. She did not know when he would return, how long she might have to wait. She wanted it over and done with tonight. She had felt a change at the threshold of the year, as if she had crossed a space that separated an end from a beginning. The journey she had been on in herself could not be without a destination. Throughout their relationship, whatever her feelings for Matthew, she had known, deep down, that it was herself she pursued and discovered. He had lent himself to her for that.

There was the sound of
rikisha
wheels lighting sparks upon the icy road. There was the glow below the window of the runner's lantern and Reggie's voice, slurred and drunk. She waited, listening to him enter the house, go into the drawing room and then ascend the stairs. He came into the room, bringing with him a gust of cold outside air, brittle with snow, and the smell of his damp woollen coat. He held a brandy in his hand; he came straight to where she sat, picked up the poker and prodded the fire.

‘God, it's cold.' He tossed some coal onto the embers; they smoked and shut out the glow. ‘Not sleeping, Amy? Feeling no better? Maybe it's the old malaria again.' He bent over the fire to warm his hands.

‘It's nothing,' she said. ‘I'm all right now. I need to talk to you.'

‘Talk?' He picked up the brandy and took a gulp. The
smell of spirits permeated his clothes and hung upon his breath. There were other smells too, sour and exhausted, the dregs of revelry. There was no need to ask where he had been. He and Cooper-Hewitt must have started the year in the lusty way they wished it to continue. She drew her shawl about her. There was that odour of perfume again, seeping from him vaguely.

‘I don't know how to go on in this way. I'm living without meaning.' She was unsure of how to approach him.

‘Meaning?' he snorted. ‘What d'you want
meaning
for? You've all you could ask for and more, as you damn well know. Don't tell me such bloody lies.' He turned to face her and took another drink, his eyes angry and derisive. ‘It's that damn Organ Grinder of yours who's started all this off, planting ideas in your empty head. Well, he's dead as a doornail, as you well know. Didn't even have a Christian burial, but went up in flames like the pagan he was.'

She started forward in her chair. ‘He's to be buried at home, you know that. He's nothing to do with this. I cannot take any more of you.
You
!'
she shouted.

He became suddenly silent, his eyes wary with that calculation she knew so well. ‘Well, what d'you want to do?' he asked.

‘I want to go home. I want an end, I want a divorce. I cannot go on like this!'

‘A divorce?' he said, as if he considered the matter.

‘I've thought about it, I'm aware of the price. I'm willing to face whatever stigma I must.'

‘I see,' he said, ‘I see.' He reached again for his brandy. In the grate a single piece of coal burned slowly with new strength. ‘And what of the children? With whom shall they remain?'

‘With me, of course.' She twisted the rings on her hands in her lap. ‘You know it is usual for children to remain with their mother,' she said without looking at him, and listened to his silence.

His voice when he spoke again was sinuous. ‘That,
my Kitten, would depend, I think, upon the mother. Certainly, it would depend.'

‘What are you trying to say?'

‘Before the eyes of the world and the law you would have some difficulty, I believe, in proving your suitability. You have been far from discreet in your dealings with that Organ Grinder. The town is rife with gossip. I gave you permission to live your own life, I'm not denying that. But it was for a purpose, to further our life here together. Do you think I haven't watched you? Did you think you had taken me in about all those Legation things? Oh Amy, silly Kitten.' He threw back his head with a shout of laughter.