Authors: Meira Chand
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.’