The Painted Cage (35 page)

The idea came suddenly, hare-brained in proportion to her own desperation. She would make use of Annie Luke herself. She would invent her for Reggie in Yokohama, she would make his dream come true. She would write a letter to Reggie, pretending to be Annie, and ask him for some money. She would suggest he get this money for her from his wife, as he had before. Reggie must be persuaded to reply to Annie via the post office, and Amy could retrieve the letter. She would then have proof of Reggie’s ways in writing for her father and trustees or a court of law. It might work if luck was on her side. And if not, she had only to admit a practical joke to Reggie.
The plan filled her with excitement; her heart began to beat.

From then on the thought of Annie Luke filled Amy’s mind in a different way. She decided her Annie must make a personal appearance. Amy alone would be witness to it. Reggie would not doubt her, considering their discussion of Annie appearing in Yokohama and his wish for this to happen. Once she had a single letter in hand from Reggie saying all she needed, Annie Luke could disappear as she had come, never meeting Reggie. Annie would make her appearance on Saturday, regatta day, Amy decided. Reggie would be at the Yacht Club, and she could later confirm Annie’s visit before Reggie’s friends. She closed her eyes and prayed that God would take her side.

Regatta day dawned wet as a sodden rag. Amy felt
wretched
from a recurrent bout of malaria. She forced herself up and stared from the window at the rain. The loquat trees dripped outside, and in the room a damp patch stained the ceiling; it was dark and unbearably cramped. They would not be here much longer, negotiations for the new house were progressing, and they planned to move before the winter. Amy felt happy at the thought of their new home. Even Mabel had approved of the airy rooms, immaculate garden and its view of the bay.

Amy shivered in the damp and began to dress
lethargically;
she would rather stay in bed. A few days in
Miyanoshita
the week before had done nothing to revive her. The autumn air had been crisp and the hills beautiful, but she felt no better. Quinine no longer had an effect; she must take arsenic again, as Dr Charles advised. She would ask him for a prescription if she met him at the boathouse. It was already past tiffin, Reggie had gone to the regatta hours before. She must pull herself together. Annie Luke must appear today.

Amy went downstairs to the bureau in the drawing room. She hesitated for a moment as she sat down, then took out a sheet of paper and began to write.

She searched in the bureau drawer and found a small, plain visiting card. Carefully, she printed the initials A.L. and then beneath a date, 1888, the year Reggie last met Annie, the year their child was born and the year Reggie married Amy. Satisfied, she sealed the envelope and at the front door called a
rikisha
from the stand in the road to deliver the letter to the yacht club. The boy grinned toothily as she handed him the money, she shut the door and leaned against it, sick with nerves. There was no going back now. She would not tell anyone, neither Dicky nor Mabel. No one must know Annie Luke was not real. She would tell Reggie the woman was heavily veiled if he asked for a description. And it was not unusual that she should answer the door herself. At this hour Jessie was in the nursery with the children and the servants were not about the house, lazing in their quarters in the hour after tiffin. There seemed no loose ends to her plan, nothing she had forgotten.

It was all puddles and a drizzling sky at the boathouse; people huddled beneath umbrellas. Teams rowed bravely, hair plastered above wet flannels. Reggie was baffled by the news of the veiled woman who had called for him at the house. Amy teased him before the crowd; the more people who heard, the better.

‘I went to the door myself,’ she explained. ‘I’d never seen the woman before. I couldn’t make out her features behind all that heavy veiling. She refused to tell me anything beyond giving me that card I sent to you, Reggie. She said she’d return at four.’

‘You’d better be off, then,’ chuckled Mr Cooper-Hewitt, ‘to keep your appointment with this mysterious woman.’

‘Any idea who she is?’ Mr Ewart asked in excited falsetto.

Amy laughed. ‘She seemed troubled, Reggie. I hope you’ve not got a damsel into distress. Now do go, as Mr Cooper-Hewitt says.’

Reggie nodded and ambled away bewilderedly, stooped beneath a black umbrella, the concentration of his thoughts apparent from his back. Amy stayed on talking to Dicky and Mabel about the woman, and Dicky expressed his further disgust in no uncertain terms.

‘I’d better go, I feel so unwell,’ Amy said at last. ‘The damp makes my bones ache terribly.’

‘Keep a stout heart,’ Dicky said meaningfully. ‘Let us know about the veiled lady.’

‘In your circumstances I’d have insisted she reveal herself,’ Mabel said. ‘I hear a skeleton rattling in a cupboard. Otherwise why the mystery?’ Mabel raised her eyebrows.

Dr Charles passed as they stood on the verandah of the boathouse. Amy called to him and put up her umbrella, walking across to meet him as he came towards her.

‘I was hoping to see you here, Dr Charles,’ she smiled.

‘Mrs Redmore?’ The doctor greeted her. ‘I trust
Miyanoshita
did you some good?’

‘Not really. I feel quite wretched still. The quinine has lost all effect,’ she admitted.

‘Well, I can only suggest, as I have before, a course of arsenic. But you don’t like the idea, do you?’ Dr Charles replied. His bulk beneath a striped umbrella faced her argumentatively. ‘If you will follow your own advice or that of others not qualified, it is no wonder you are not better.’ She had upset him by consulting a homeopath whose medicine had done nothing. She did not get on
well with Dr Charles, even at the best of times. She had the feeling he looked into her soul and saw there only what he wanted.

‘It is just that I do hate the after-effects. It does not agree with me and I feel depressed.’ She remembered the time a couple of years before when she had taken it on his prescription.

‘You must make up your mind, Mrs Redmore. You have my advice if you wish to take it,’ Dr Charles sniffed.

‘Well, if you see no other way I will give it another try. I cannot go on feeling like this,’ she agreed reluctantly.

Dr Charles nodded. ‘I’ll write you a prescription now.’ He fished about in his pockets for a piece of paper.

‘Let me hold your umbrella,’ Amy offered, taking it from him. Dr Charles pulled out his regatta programme and tore off the blank back page.

‘This’ll have to do,’ he said, writing the arsenic
prescription
upon it. ‘There, that should put you right.’ He took back his umbrella from Amy and walked on towards the boathouse.

‘I hope it helps,’ Amy said to herself. Reggie’s tolerance of the horrid stuff never ceased to amaze her. At the thought of Reggie she hurried towards the gate. He must be in a fever of impatience, waiting for Annie Luke.

Amy returned home by five o’clock. Reggie was pacing the drawing room. ‘She didn’t come. Look at the time – you said she’d be here by four.’

‘She did say if not this afternoon, then in the morning. Maybe she’ll come tomorrow,’ Amy reminded him.

‘I’m sure it’s Annie. I told you she was in Port Arthur. She’s found her way to Yokohama. Whatever can she want and why the mystery? I should think she’s in trouble through that cad Reilly. He’s notorious,’ Reggie said
excitedly.
He did not doubt the presence of Annie Luke in Yokohama. Amy prayed the remainder of her plan would proceed as comfortably.

Reggie was agitated, he could settle to nothing. It was a miserable Sunday morning. Rain still fell, it had not stopped since yesterday, ruining the regatta. Who else
could the mysterious woman be but Annie, and why had she not come again? If she were here with that Reilly she might have good reason to remain incognito, many people said the man was a spy. Where could he find her? He felt abnormally groggy after the exertion of the regatta, he was coming down with a bout of liver. He had been taking extra arsenic for several weeks in an attempt to ward off an attack, building up his dosage to a level that usually put him right. This time it was not working, he felt only worse and worse. Amy insisted he see Dr Charles, as if the man, like all his kind, had some magic up his sleeve. To humour Amy he had agreed to him coming at five. Why did Annie not arrive? Reggie crossed the room to stand before the window. The road was bare. A coolie swept up some leaves, the sky was heavy with rain. Where could Annie be? He turned to his medicine shelf and poured another dose of Fowler’s into a glass of water. He must get himself right. It was a matter of will and the right amount of arsenic. This was not the time to be ill.

Amy sat down at the bureau, cupping her chin in her hand. Since the regatta Reggie had been unwell with his usual liver troubles. He had spent Sunday in bed but, however ill, he took no notice of Dr Charles’s plea for moderation in his diet and his life. Tonight he was dining out with Mr Cooper-Hewitt, and Amy knew what that implied. Today was Tuesday, three days since Annie’s mysterious visit. Reggie was in a fine state of agitation, he had not a single doubt about Annie’s existence in Yokohama. It was difficult to control her anger, seeing him so aroused by his Annie. What must the woman really be like, Amy wondered bitterly, to have such power over a man like Reggie. Amy was filled by resentment, but also by authority. She controlled Reggie invisibly now, manipulating him like a marionette at the arbitrary pull of a string. It was time to give him the message he waited for so eagerly. She wondered what to write and how to write it, toying with the pen. She had only a vague recollection of Annie’s writing – she had destroyed that terrible letter received in Sungei Ujong. She practised a
few words. It was hopeless – she could not remember Annie’s writing. But Reggie was in such a state he would probably notice nothing; it had been years since he heard from Annie Luke. She must first build up Reggie’s
anticipation
to a point where he would do what Annie wished. She would not ask immediately for money. Amy began to write.

Amy reread the letter several times; her heart beat fast. She sealed it in an envelope and addressed it to Reggie at the club. She would send it from the post office when she went into town.

Jessie Flack turned in the dark as the front door banged below her in the house, Mr Redmore had returned. She could tell he was drunk by a familiar pattern of sounds. The hummed tune and unsteady step, the thud of the hat he threw at the coatstand and missed, the clink of glass as he poured out a last drink before he started up the stairs. Later, on such occasions, there were often sounds from the Redmores’ room, unmistakable to Jessie Flack. She waited in her narrow bed, anticipating in disgust all the small noises unfolded. Her heart beat at these times and there was that tightness in her body that she hated. And afterwards, for days, a restlessness filled her. It was an ordeal she must endure, lying rigid in her bed, her pulse alight, her ears strained, sweat building in the hollows of her taut and bony body. Sometimes, there was also Mrs Redmore’s voice in a muffled cry – of fury, pain or pleasure it was difficult to tell. Afterwards she barely slept until day diffused the window. It was a further
iniquity to be endured in the mistaken employment she had come so far to undertake.

Mr Redmore seemed especially drunk, he stumbled on the stairs and cursed. He had been ill the day before; killing himself with drink. She heard the heave of the banisters, she heard him pause upon the landing, as if to gather breath before turning to his room. Once or twice in drunkenness he had even tried her door, but she took the precaution of locking it firmly and he had turned immediately away. A woman in service, a woman alone, must know how to guard against such things. Jessie’s heart beat at the remembrance and the thought again of Mr Redmore’s presence now upon the landing. She imagined him standing there, illuminated by the bracket light upon the wall, staring at her door, as if her thoughts already drew his steps towards her.

She sat up suddenly, for now the sounds were not imagination. She heard the turn of the handle and the push of his shoulder against the frame. She saw a crack of landing light burst suddenly upon her with the
retraction
of a half-turned key, insecure within the lock. She did not scream, silenced by the shock. She saw him hesitate, surprised as much as she with the compliance of
circumstances
to his will. The smell of his drunkenness invaded the room, then he laughed and pushed the door behind him. Jessie leaped up but the room was small. He caught her roughly and pushed her down once more on the bed, heavy as a rock upon her. She tried to struggle and call out, but she felt his hand upon her mouth.

‘Keep still,’ he said. ‘You’ll wake the house. You want this, you know you do.’ His breath was rancid and covered her, the pulse beat in her head.