The Painted Cage (38 page)

He started up in bed, his face in the night-light sweaty, depleted of all fat. ‘Did you find her, Amy? Go to the post office. I know a letter has come.’ His voice was dry and painful. She stumbled to her feet. He began to beat the bedclothes, moaning with pain.

She gave him some Vichy water; to swallow was
difficult.
He looked like a dishevelled, desperate child.

‘Try and sleep, Reggie. Is that better? I’ll find Annie, I’ll look after her,’ she promised, taking his hand and stroking his head. She felt guilty to add to his suffering.

‘Will you really look after her, Amy? Promise me you will?’ He grasped her hand tighter. It was dreadful to see his concern and to know he had never felt with such depth about her. Had he loved her, thought Amy, as he had loved Annie Luke, how different their life might have been.

‘I promise.’ She kissed him gently and sat down by the bed. ‘You’re not to worry about Annie.’ She bathed his brow with lavender water. She felt for him as she did for the children. Her patience was endless, her anger was gone. Sadness was the strongest emotion she felt for Reggie now. She would do anything to help him become the man he should have been. Reggie closed his eyes and Amy stood up. ‘Poor Reggie,’ she said to herself.

She swayed upon her feet, nauseated with exhaustion. It had gone on like this now for almost a week. The room was airless, rain outside beat upon the windowpanes. They breathed the sickening, fetid smells of Reggie’s
disgorging body. However quickly she disposed of the mess, however much carbolic was used, the odour of vomit and diarrhoea clung stubbornly to the air. The noise of the rain and the stench of the room threw her back to that time in Sungei Ujong.

She was ready to scrap the whole Annie Luke plan, no longer sure she could carry it off; in exhaustion she had lost conviction. Amy had gone without heart to the post office as Reggie had insisted. But instead of a letter from Annie Luke, she collected his own letter to the woman, unclaimed as she had known it must be. She felt guilty for such calculation, when Reggie lay so ill. And yet she knew, whatever she felt, she must now protect herself against him. She was filled with sudden compassion for Reggie in his present state. But once he was himself again her feelings might revert. She could not trust fate to engineer a new compatibility between them. If, when Reggie was better, she decided to continue with the plan, she had her first piece of evidence. For now fatigue claimed her, the days behind were confused by the pressure of each sickly hour. Reggie stirred again.

‘I didn’t take my Fowler’s. Give it to me, Amy, the usual amount in water.’

‘Surely you’ve had enough of that? It doesn’t seem to help any more than Dr Charles’s prescriptions. Maybe it’s even harming you. I think you should tell Dr Charles of your arsenic,’ she said, worried for him suddenly.

‘I’ll get it myself, and don’t you tell him. He knows nothing, he’s a fool,’ Reggie growled, struggling with the bedclothes. She stumbled up again, bringing him the dose.

‘It always works. The cure can be sudden, just as it was in Sungei Ujong. You remember it, Amy, then?’ He threw back the dose. She was too tired to know how much he took, how many times she had poured it out or he had administered to himself. Unlike the time in Sungei Ujong, when the houseboy had bought it from the Chinese chemist in whatever amounts were needed, she was now settled with the responsibility of securing Reggie’s arsenic. His clandestine sources were beyond her reach.

‘You’ll have to go to the usual shops, Schedel’s, Maruya’s, the Normal Dispensary. If you buy from each in rota, I could acquire the right amount. It’s only a matter of a few days,’ Reggie hoarsely instructed. ‘If you’re a man like me, there’s arsenic in plenty in Yokohama – any taxidermist could tell you. But you’re a woman. I must have my supply the above-board way just for these few days.’

She had given him her own small bottle of Fowler’s, prescribed by Dr Charles and bought, as he told her, from the other chemists. She had gone twice in the last few days and on Sunday, while she was out with the children, Reggie told Rachel to send a
rikisha
man to Maruya’s with a chit he had written. More would be needed tomorrow; they could not go on indefinitely buying it like this. She settled down to sleep again.

Reggie had learned to read the shadows thrown onto the ceiling, the movement of a
rikisha
in the road below, the breeze through the loquat trees. The creak of mahogany, a tread on the stairs, the familiarity of voices appeared through pain and drowsiness as islands in uncharted days. He knew he was ill, worse than ever in Sungei Ujong or when invalided home the year he married Amy, the year he had spent with Annie Luke. Pinioned now upon the horizontal, his perspectives of the world had changed. People loomed up without warning and he was flattened by their benevolence and his wretched
dependence
upon them. He was resentful of everything – Cooper-Hewitt’s unquenchable jokes and health, Amy’s irreproachable, dutiful ministering, the sight of beef tea or the innocuous potions that fool Charles produced from his bag of tricks. He resented the lack of control he had over his fate or his body. His innards showed a flagrant disregard for all he secretly sent down to quiet them.

He woke to pain or a sponge of lavender water cutting through repulsive odours. His body squirted like an old used bag filled with fetid waters, it hung in loose folds about him. And yet at times, for hours, this state of siege retreated and he sat up, tottered about or staggered to a
chair. The days wore on, he had lost count of how many were strung up behind him. He smiled blandly, released from pain a fog appeared to fill his exhausted mind. Time jumped about erratically, throwing up irrelevant memories. Again and again Annie Luke was conjured up before him, smiling her thin, enigmatic smile, turning bitterly away. The wrong he had done her filled him now, a separate, throbbing pain.

‘Reggie? Reg?’ The voice called. Annie held her child up for him to see its fair, tight curls, its sailor suit. He saw it had her eyes.

‘Annie? Where are you?’ She smiled and pain knotted in him. Again the lavender sponge came forward,
dripping
and dribbling uncomfortably. Behind it the face leaning forward was Annie, then Amy, changing in a slippery way, deceitful as the shadows.

‘Annie?’ He struggled to sit up. A hand pushed him down. It was Amy keeping Annie away, or maybe she could find her. Maybe she was the only one who could find Annie Luke.

‘Go now, Amy. Find her, please. She’ll be there this time, I’m certain.’

Sometimes the hand on him changed. Sometimes it was old Charles with that horny wart on his thumb and his persistent needles shooting strange substances into his veins, until his gentle dreams of Annie gathered in vivacity to burst within his mind. Then the ripple of the breeze in the loquat trees echoed like a roar. Annie’s face became twisted and vicious, her nails grew longer than spears, she beckoned to the air. Then over the windowsill, slimy, shelly things crawled towards his flesh. He
screamed
and screamed, but nobody heard.

There were times when he awoke alone to the room, and found himself at peace, his mind and body free. At such times he turned to his medicine shelf, to the Fowler’s, throwing back larger doses than Amy
administered
at his instructions. Amy might secure Fowler’s Solution, but white arsenic was out of the question. He had only one packet at the back of a drawer, that he was
saving for the worst. He cursed the lack of foresight that had caused him to have no store of the stuff.

He had got himself to a chair again. His nightclothes stuck to him sweatily, his belly was sticky with the
liniment
of sugar of lead. He was haemorrhaging slightly; at these levels the arsenic had that side-effect. He was determined to hide it from Dr Charles, who would immediately investigate the cause. He had read in his medical books that the very sugar of lead he applied externally was, if injected in such severities, a deterrent to haemorrhaging. It was already Monday; he should have been up and about by now. Sugar of lead might work the same way if he swallowed a bit, the essential thing was to get it inside him. To that end one method was surely much as another. He poured some of the liniment into a glass, and when Rachel entered the room with clean linen asked her to fill it with soda water. He gagged upon the foul metallic taste as he drank it down, but later the haemorrhaging appeared to have stopped. His prescription had not been wrong. He knew as much as that old fool Charles.

‘Just look at you,’ said Mabel unsympathetically. ‘Your gloves don’t match and your hat’s all askew. In town I’d be forced to disown you.’ She walked ahead of Amy through the garden. ‘You may be tired, but it’s no excuse.’

Amy looked down at her hands in consternation.

‘Now this is the Dragon’s Den,’ Mabel announced, leading the way into a labyrinth of caves and stairways and fretted stone gratings. ‘It’s copied from the Mandarin Garden at Shanghai. Patrick sent some architects over to China to get the right idea.’ It was to see this new wonder in Mabel’s garden that Amy had been summoned. She was glad to get away from the house and Reggie’s infirmity. Mabel had also invited the children; they followed behind with Rachel.

‘You’re the first people to view it,’ Mabel said. ‘The last workmen departed only yesterday.’

Tom rushed suddenly forward past Amy to pull
excitedly
at Mabel’s skirt. ‘Where’s the Minotaur live? Their
homes is in places like this. All horrid and rocky and
frightful
.’
He brought forth his new word proudly.

‘Let go of my skirt,’ Mabel demanded. ‘Has your mother taught you no manners yet?’ She glared at Tom.

Amy stepped forward to retrieve him. She held his hand firmly and walked him along.

‘The Minotaur was Greek, Tom. The story we read was about Ancient Greece. Aunt Mabel’s garden is Chinese. There are no Minotaurs in China,’ Amy explained. She felt too tired to tackle Tom. Rachel made no effort to come forward and take him. The girl was quietly insolent now whenever possible. Amy sighed. She could not blame her after what had happened.

‘Not true,’ Tom insisted. ‘Minotaurs everywhere, in all
frightful
places. Don’t like this place, Mama, it’s horrid. Tom going home.’ He struggled with Amy’s hand.

‘This is called the Dragon’s Den,’ Mabel turned on him sternly. ‘I’ll call out my dragon if you don’t behave.’

Tom scowled blackly at her. ‘Where is he then? Show Tom. Minotaurs kill dragons.’

‘Not this one,’ Mabel answered.

‘Stupid dragon,’ Tom muttered, but walked quietly by Amy, looking fearfully up at the grotesque rocks eroded into weird shapes by the currents of deep river beds, from where Patrick Rice had secured them.

‘Here we are,’ said Mabel as they came to a clearing and stood before a Chinese summerhouse, reminiscent of a pagoda. Servants waited, tea was laid out inside. Tom broke free and rushed ahead. A servant laughed and blocked his way.

Inside they sat on black-wood chairs and couches inlaid with mother-of-pearl. In the middle of the summerhouse a huge, ornately painted urn had been turned into a fish tank. Mabel took the children to it and pointed out the goldfish, each with six long tails.

‘It’s cruel,’ said Cathy, looking at the thick-walled urn. ‘They can’t see out of that.’

‘Oh, my!’ said Mabel. ‘And why should goldfish need to see?’

‘Because they’ve got eyes,’ answered Cathy. ‘My
goldfish
is called Peter. He lives in a
glass
bowl next to my bed. There’s
nothing
he cannot see.’

‘Eat your tea,’ snapped Mabel, ‘then you can go home.’

Soon they went, each side of Rachel, looking
apprehensively
up at the rocks, retreating from the Dragon’s Den.

‘Thank God they’ve gone,’ said Mabel. ‘Children have simply
no
appreciation. They shouldn’t be born until they’re twelve years old. I’m tired out already by them.’ Mabel sipped her tea.

‘How do you expect them to like a place like this? It’s enough to give them nightmares, all these grotesque rocks. They haven’t got adult eyes,’ Amy defended them.

‘Patrick has spent a fortune,’ Mabel said. ‘Don’t you tell him that.’ Amy leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and closed her eyes in exhaustion.

Mabel observed her over her teacup. ‘What are we to do with you? You look a mess, I don’t exaggerate. Is Reggie really no better?’ Amy shook her head.

‘Perhaps he’ll die,’ said Mabel, refilling Amy’s cup.

‘How can you say such things?’ Amy demanded.

‘I’d have thought nothing could be more convenient,’ Mabel replied.

‘It’s not right to think like that,’ Amy said, closing her eyes again. All she wanted was to go to sleep.

‘You’ve become so virtuous and boring,’ Mabel replied. ‘If I were you I’d have fed a man like Reggie arsenic years ago.’

Amy opened her eyes but said nothing.

‘Doesn’t he take arsenic or something as a tonic?’ Mabel inquired in sudden curiosity. ‘I think Patrick heard a rumour once.’

‘There isn’t much that Reggie
hasn’t
tried in the way of medicines,’ Amy said.

‘Well, if he’s immune to arsenic, rat poison might do,’ Mabel decided.

‘Oh, do leave me alone,’ complained Amy. ‘Sometimes you’re worse than the children.’

‘I’m only trying to cheer you up.’ Mabel sounded hurt. ‘You’re just no fun any more.’

Mabel drank her tea in silent disapproval. She
understood
nothing of this new, chaste Amy, austere enough to make even Mabel take hurried stock of herself.

‘I can’t bear it,’ said Mabel suddenly. ‘You’re making me as dull as you’ve become yourself.’

‘I wouldn’t say dull,’ said Amy, opening her eyes. ‘Only wiser.’

‘Oh, my!’ said Mabel. ‘Haven’t we changed?’ Amy shrugged, and prepared to get up.

‘I don’t regret a thing I’ve done. I’ve got over my guilts.’ She remembered Guy le Ferrier and the misery shared with Mabel. ‘I can even see purpose in it now.’