The Painted Cage (30 page)

‘But I have made up my mind. I want to go.' She forced the words from her.

‘Well, go then, Kitten, go where you please. You're as free as you wish to be. But the children, I can tell you, I intend shall stay with me. Any court of law will award custody to me. There is the proof of a hundred witnesses to determine the kind of woman you are. No court has ever placed the future of impressionable children in the hands of a mother of your disposition. I have all the advantages, Amy, the law is on my side. Your own
wilfulness
has trapped you.' He gave a snort of amusement and sat down in the opposite chair.

She could not speak. There was no doubt that he was right. She began to shiver, she had been tense as a ball of tight string all evening. He had trapped her, he could read her like a book. Reggie regarded her calmly above his brandy glass.

‘So you see, Amy, unless you are prepared to give up your children, there is no escape.' He spoke the words slowly, like a rope he wound about her again. ‘Have a sip. It'll help you feel better.' He leaned across the space between them to push his glass at her. His voice was kinder; he had her in his hand again. She drank a mouthful and let the stuff shoot through her. ‘You'll soon forget all the high-faluting ideas that Organ Grinder stuffed into your head. He's dead, Amy. You'll forget him, too. He took you in with all his twaddle; I know the
type he was. We can still do well together, Amy – no need for all this silly talk.' She looked at him and saw in the light of the fire the old arithmetic in his eyes. They sat in silence. There was nothing she could say.

It began suddenly beneath them, an abrupt roll, like the swell of a ship beneath their feet. The floor twitched in the dark as if it pushed up towards them. They looked at each other in fear. Amy started from her chair. The second tremor began as the first ended, one folding into the other with a new and violent movement. The boards moved and shuddered beneath them. There was a rumbling that seemed as much the stirring earth as the groaning, straining house, its bones and windows
shivering
like a set of nervous teeth.

‘Get out!' he yelled. ‘Get out!'

‘The children.'

‘I'll get them.' He flung her towards the door. Already they heard the screams of Rachel at the earthquake and the children's terrified voices. Amy turned in panic towards their room, but he pushed her to the stairs and she saw that already they were behind her and would follow. As the house steadied another shock began, a sickening, uncanny movement pitching her off balance against the wall. She heard the crashing of glass and the creaking of the convulsing house. It was as if some
storm-caught
ship was tossing her about within its belly. She ran out into the garden and clung to the trunk of a pine. Everywhere was covered with snow, the ground
shuddered
again. She saw Reggie with both children in his arms stagger over the snowy patch of lawn, his footprints reeling like a drunk. And as suddenly as it had begun, the earth steadied and was still. She looked up, relaxing her grip on the tree. The moon streamed down, luminous in the black, icy sky. Above her in the branches crows flapped, disturbed from sleep, cawing their annoyance. They beat up a wind that fanned her; one swooped low and brushed her arm. All over the Bluff were the cries of children, the barking of dogs and the twittering of
awakened
birds. She looked up and the sky was full of agitated wings. The still snow upon the ground gave no indication
of the violence that had passed beneath. The
chimneystack
of the neighbouring house had collapsed and left a raw stub, like an amputated limb.

The children ran to her, sobbing, across the white grass. She took them in her arms, feeling the throb of their small hearts and the wetness of their cheeks. She held them tightly, her arms locked about them both. Beyond their warmth, she remembered again that other earthquake on the bridge at Enoshima and all that it had precipitated. It was as if she ached for a country she was exiled from forever. She held the children closer still, her cheeks as wet as theirs. Before them Reggie stood silently, his feet planted wide, his face inert with tiredness and relief. All he wanted to do was to go to sleep. He had had enough for one night.

The
Japan
Weekly
Mail
summary of news:

Amy listened in silence to her own words. Robert Russell read from her statement at the inquest last November. His voice filled the court, edged by a sarcasm that ensnared her story. His tone brought it up like a helpless fish on a hook for the judgement of the world. She remembered the inquest; she had come straight from the
funeral to face them all. They had been arranged in displeasure before her, their eyes sullen with thoughts not yet released into conviction. Her fear had been
perforated
then by hope and determination. But now in Robert Russell’s mouth her words sounded suspect, even to herself. She listened to him reiterate all she had said that November day about the visit to her home of the mysterious woman they knew as Annie Luke. He picked up the bundle of her letters and looked up at Judge Bowman.

‘The letter, Exhibit Q2, my lord, is from the deceased. It is dated Wednesday, 14 October and addressed to Miss Annie Luke, Post Office, Yokohama. It reads:

Mr Russell continued again with Amy’s statement. ‘On 29 October I received an anonymous note delivered this time on the doorstep: “Beware, dare to speak one word of the truth and you shall never leave Japan alive.” Another letter postmarked 1 November was received in the same manner: “I have done what I can for you, true I have made you suffer, but I have written to Mr Russell and Mr Easely. Yokohama will be troubled no more by Annie Luke.”’

Mr Russell looked up and surveyed the court before speaking again in tones of disapproval. ‘The following letters were put in at Mr Easely’s suggestion and sworn to by him, my lord,’ he said.

Mr Easely stood up. ‘May the letters be read now?’ he asked.

Mr Russell took up a letter dated 29 October and addressed to Mr Easely from the mysterious Annie Luke.

‘That was put in at Mr Easely’s request?’ Judge Bowman asked.

‘Yes. I had no intention of putting it in or of bringing it before the jury, but Mr Easely called for it.’ Mr Russell smirked. ‘I found it on my desk one morning after the postal delivery.’

Jack Easely rose at once to object to Robert Russell’s insinuation.

‘Mr Easely has also called for the letter from Annie Luke he received on 11 November last, which, it may be remembered, was after the inquest and on the first day of the magisterial proceedings to formally charge the accused with the murder of her husband. It may also be
remembered
that after the inquest was concluded Mr Easely offered by advertisement in the public papers a reward for the identification of the writer or writers of these letters. But the writer was not forthcoming.’ Mr Russell smirked. With a flourish he produced his pocket watch to precipitate the noontime conclusion. Judge Bowman nodded, and gathered his papers together. The court then adjourned for tiffin. Amy Redmore stepped down from the dock.

At two o’clock Judge Bowman rapped his hammer, intent upon afternoon order. The weight of all that
threatened
Amy did not obstruct the sense of entertainment throbbing through the court. The audience had lunched in high spirits at the Club or the Grand Hotel. They had returned a Bordeaux of an inauspicuous year, ordered champagne for a birthday and carried their celebration of life back into the court. Voices discussed the quality of suet crust and the superiority of meringue. Bitten-off sentences fell about Amy, voices juggling digestion with anticipation of the afternoon’s exposure. There was talk of the death of the Empress Dowager and complaints about the rules of mourning requested of the foreign community by the Royal Household. Loud decisions were taken to ignore the request and cancel no enjoyments.

‘Will those gentlemen standing in the public part of the court room take their seats so that there is standing room for others coming in,’ Judge Bowman ordered above the noise. At five past two it was quiet enough for
proceedings
to begin.

Bertha Kaufmann was called and sworn and examined by Mr Russell. Amy’s heart beat hard just looking at the woman. She heard again her ingratiating voice and thick, flat Swiss-German accent. She had a cold and reached nervously to pick a nostril before she realized what she was doing.

‘You are a Swiss citizen and nursery nurse to Mrs Phelps’s children?’ Mr Russell began, pacing up and down.

‘Yes, I am living here as a nursery nurse.’

‘You were an intimate friend of Miss Jessica Mary Flack, nursery governess to Mrs Redmore’s children?’

‘Yes, I was.’ Bertha Kaufmann burst suddenly into tears. A chair was brought forward for her.

‘Do you remember receiving from Miss Flack fragments of paper?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Bertha Kaufmann sniffed.

‘Did you stitch these fragments together?’ Robert Russell picked up and waved Dicky Huckle’s pile of letters at her.

‘Yes I did.’

‘Were you aware what these fragments were and where they had been found?’ Mr Russell asked.

‘They were letters Mrs Redmore had torn up and dropped into her wastepaper basket,’ Bertha answered.

Mr Russell nodded. ‘Did you tell Miss Flack that you knew how to piece letters together?’ Jack Easely insisted on cross-examination.

‘No, I found that out for myself.’

‘Did she ask you to do it for her?’

‘No, I offered to her to do it.’

‘You advised her to collect these scraps, did you?’

‘I did so.’

‘And why did you do that?’

‘In case it should be known that gentlemen went down to 169, not in the form of house friends, that possibly it might put – possibly a false stain might be brought up against my friend. In that case those letters would be a written proof to the contrary.’

‘That would only be as regards Mr Huckle, I presume? Did you think your friend’s character stood in need of such protection?’ Jack Easely asked.

‘It would not be evidence if I were to say anything more.’ Bertha was suddenly coyly evasive. She blew her nose.

Judge Bowman leaned forward in annoyance. ‘But answer the question. Mr Easely is the judge of what he wants to elicit from you.’

Bertha Kaufmann pouted. ‘I am not English. I am not understanding quite the meaning.’ She frowned.

‘You say you wanted to prevent a false stain resting on your friend, and Mr Easely asks was her character such that she needed this?’ Judge Bowman explained. Bertha was shocked.

‘No. Oh no, no,’ she cried out in alarm. Judge Bowman leaned back in his chair. Soon Bertha stepped self-
righteously
from the witness box. There was a murmur of sympathy throughout the court.

It had been a day of some confusion. People shook their heads in exasperation, and argued privately far into the
night over the mysterious Annie Luke, heard about that morning. Could it be she who had murdered Reggie Redmore? Did she even exist beyond imagination? And if she did, where was she now? Why had no one ever seen her, except for Amy Redmore?

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.