The Painted Cage (4 page)

‘I had hoped you need never know. I made her a
settlement
before we married, she promised to be silent,' Reggie said at last.

‘So it
is
true, then?' Amy confirmed beneath her breath. The letter lay open in Reggie's hand. She stared at the badly formed writing.

Amy felt sick. She turned away from the sight of the letter.

Reggie cleared his throat. ‘You know nothing yet of life, Amy, or the needs of a man alone. I never pretended to live like a monk. I was a year at home before I met you, and I had known Annie from long before that, since I was a boy. She's crafty, you're not to believe half she says.'

‘It's not the knowing of her,' Amy said. ‘She's had your child. Can you not understand what that means to me, besides the other awful things she says?'

‘It is not possible to form a liaison with any woman without the danger of a child. You must know that. These accidents will happen, even if unwanted.' He spoke without guilt or apology, his voice matter of fact, as if the fault were hers for not understanding the ways of the world. He denied her the chance to forgive. She did not answer, feeling it was a dream, that her life had not been shattered like a bit of cheap fairground glass. No explanation could erase the things that woman had said, about Reggie and his past, about the reasons he had married Amy that made nonsense of the heat of feeling that had carried her here, so far. She felt soiled now to know there had been nothing secret between herself and Reggie.

‘If your past holds more, I'd rather know it now,' she said in new fury. He was silent for a moment.

‘There are other children, Amy.' His voice was cold and clipped. ‘Three, or was it four? I hardly remember.'

‘What?' she gasped. She had never expected such an admission.

‘It was long ago, during those years in Sarawak when I worked for Charles Brooke, the White Rajah. I went out at nineteen. Brooke didn't want the problems of white memsahibs; he encouraged native mistresses instead. We called them sleeping dictionaries. You learned the
language from them as an added bonus.' He gave a snort of laughter. ‘They bred like rabbits, there were half-caste children everywhere. I had more than one woman there and several children.'

Amy buried her face in her hands. Reggie looked at her without emotion. ‘You asked to know. I would never have told you but for this business with Annie. But perhaps it is best you face the facts about me.'

‘I hate you, hate you,' Amy shouted.

‘There is no need for jealousy. I couldn't trace my own brats if I wished to. There were no obligations to those women. They were natives. When you left Sarawak, well, you simply
left.
It was as if they never existed.'

‘It's all horrid, so horrid,' she cried. Reggie shrugged indifferently, calm upon the verandah. She disliked the way he talked.

‘It's not horrid, although it is a shock for you. It's just reality, and it was long ago.'

‘And Annie!' she yelled, wishing suddenly to hit him, to scratch him to bits. She remembered now how Reggie had said to her father, in a voice clothed in respect, that the allowance from her marriage settlement would not be enough to cover adequately the expense of life abroad. She remembered her father had privately fumed that he would have given ten times to another man; any
parsimony
was for her own protection. Her parents had been right when they saw not passion but rapacity. How could she have been such a fool?

He took her hand again. ‘You know so little of the world, of the wiles of women like that. She trapped me, you know, deliberately.'

‘She could have got rid of the child.' She had read such things could be done, that it was even quite common amongst working-class women, amongst women like Annie Luke. She had written she worked in a milliner's, sewing roses on hats.

‘She didn't tell me until it was too late. What could I do?' He pulled at her hand, his voice full of sorrow, his pale eyes intent.

‘That child was born a week before our wedding. I
would not have married you had I known. How could you do it to me?' She sat forward in the chair screaming out the words. ‘And what of her? She could have felt no better than I, being left like that, with your child.'

‘Oh, Amy.' She struggled in his grasp but eventually let him hold her, rocking her to silence. Turning her head she saw his eyes in the lamplight watched her, unmoving. She was frightened then of what more she might discover in his face, and quickly looked away.

‘Money,' she said. ‘She wants money from me, did you read? Did you decide this with her?' Her mind was full of suspicions. ‘She says you have paid nothing for the child since you married me. She says she will go to my parents. It would kill them. It's blackmail.' She screamed at him again. He was silent. She was like a wild creature that must wear itself out before it could be touched. He waited for her to quieten.

‘Tell me, did you marry me for my money? Be honest now, no lies.' Her voice was cold; it sought to destroy. He took time in replying, sitting back in the chair. The worst was over, she was prepared to negotiate a
compromise,
he knew how to handle her now. He had no wish to hurt her, and certainly she had attracted him, of that there was no doubt.

He began to speak as truthfully as he dared. ‘Amy, you know me now, know the man I am. Of course I liked the thought of your money, and the advantages it could bring us. But it is untrue to say I married you for money. I love you more than your money, little Kitten.' His voice was soft. ‘You do my affection for you an injustice. I could not marry you against your will, your parents tried hard enough to dissuade you. Have I asked for anything but your affection? Have we not been happy these past months, in spite of this God-forsaken place? Annie is something from the past. Your money does not come into the matter, that's just Annie's bitter spite.'

‘But much of it happened after we met. You decided to leave her with a child and marry me. It's as if you lied.' She was not wrong; she felt a new and colder feeling listening to his explanation. His words were the tightrope
between truth and lies. Her tears dried with emotions she wished she could push away.

His voice was sad when he spoke again. He saw she wished to be lightened of a burden that had fallen too suddenly, and would be relieved to agree it was not entirely his fault. And as he hoped, she lay at last, exhausted against his arm, her face blank as she listened to a boat glugging up the river.

‘We must silence her,' Reggie murmured against her ear. A faint smell of whisky lingered with him. She stared numbly at the insects about the lamp. Behind the light the night was black, the jungle close. It stirred with the calls of nocturnal birds, inhuman as lost spirits. She let him tell her what to do. Her mind had shut down when she needed it most.

‘You have private means of your own, don't you?' He spoke softly. She did not know she had told him this, she was too tired to remember. ‘My salary and your allowance together barely cover expenses here. I have no means to stop Annie going to your parents.'

Amy sat up in agitation. ‘But I cannot handle that money except through my parents. They would have to know.' She twisted her rings. How could expenses be so high in a place like this? She managed the house on what Reggie gave her, a little at a time. The allowance from her marriage settlement went straight to Reggie from her father in two half-yearly instalments. She did not know what he did with it.

‘Well,' Reggie said slowly, ‘perhaps you could tell them I have a poor widowed cousin, whom you would like to help. They could send a regular amount to Annie. That should settle her. Money is all she wants. We must write at once, to your father and Annie.'

She hated to hear that name, dropped familiarly from his lips again and again or the satisfaction in his voice. She nodded, only wanting the thing neatly packaged now and put away from her. She seemed too tired to get out of the chair. He picked her up and carried her to bed. He called the maid, Puteh, to undress her. At the door he paused and watched the woman as she bent over Amy,
her hips slim as a child's within her sarong, showing each muscle. Then he turned abruptly back to the verandah, and sat listening to the jungle until the woman came out of Amy's room. He signalled to her silently.

Later, he showed Amy copies of the letters to her father and Annie Luke. She had only a vague memory of writing them, for the malaria came upon her again, more virulent than before, throwing her into a nightmare world consuming days without her knowledge. At last it was over and she woke, to see beyond the mosquito net, a lizard on the wall. Puteh washed her with cool water and brought hot broth to drink. Soon Reggie appeared solicitously, his face patchy with heat and a midday drink, his smile lopsided in apprehension, as if to gauge his ground. She remembered Annie Luke and looked away. Exhaustion seemed to wash her clean of the ability to hate. What choice did she have? The stigma of divorce or returning home, thoughts that had flooded her mind, could ruin the political career of her father. She had married with stubborn perversity; she could not forget her pride. Reggie, standing hesitantly in the doorway, appeared in need of forgiveness; a furtive expression implied such things. It would be months before a reply came from her father or Annie Luke. Why should she destroy herself?

As after the last attack she was weak. She was annoyed to find, in spite of all the bitterness he had worked upon her, that she still waited for Reggie to leave his office across the compound and stride towards the house at lunchtime or for dinner. She wished she could ignore him. But Reggie was careful to be kind and loving. He had his meals on a tray in her room, he presented her with a ginger kitten, he told stories to amuse her and played numerous hands of cards.

He came into the room as the sun set one evening and she lay gazing vacantly at the sky. He bent to kiss her and placed a small box covered with a handkerchief in her hands.

‘What is it?' she asked, excitement filling her voice before she could prevent it.

‘A special gift for a special lady,' Reggie beamed. Amy lifted the handkerchief.

‘Oh!' she exclaimed in delight. The last strong sun of the day flooded the room. In a tiny gauze cage was a massive blue butterfly. The sun lit it to phosphorus until its brilliance was like a gem upon the bed.

‘Look,' Reggie sat down and opened the door of the little box, then extracted the butterfly carefully. Amy was surprised at the gentleness of his big hands. A silk thread was tied about the insect's body, and as it flew up was pulled easily back. Reggie placed the thread in Amy's hand, the creature alighted on her wrist to flex its fantastic wings. Amy drew a quick breath.

‘Like it?' Reggie asked.

‘Oh, yes. But is it not cruel?' she replied.

‘No, it has not been maimed and when you wish you may let it go. It will come to no harm for a little. I'm happy it has pleased you.' He leaned forward and pinched her cheek. ‘You'll soon feel yourself, my Kitten. I want us to be as we were before. Nothing should separate us.' It was as near as he had come to an apology. Feeling for him welled up in her as she had thought it might never again.

‘I too want it to be like before,' she said, shy to meet his eyes. Reggie squeezed her arm. It was as if they could begin anew.

But that night, when Reggie's hand upon her implied a different purpose, she drew back instinctively. ‘Please Reggie, I'm not better yet.' But Reggie was insistent in his needs. She lay beneath him passively, his hands worked no more miracles. Instead his touch seemed only to shut that dark core of herself against him. She saw his eyes watching her detachedly, no longer disfigured by the strange expression that had stirred her own blood before. Something was broken, something was gone. She turned away then without desire, unable to help that one change within her, to face what she had welcomed before. She begged fatigue again.

‘Please, Reggie. Please, no,' she whispered. Reggie smiled, turning down the corners of his mouth, shrugging affably as if untroubled.

It was a question of time, she thought. Soon she would recover feeling, health, desire. She would push down the thought of Annie Luke; all women learn such things. She remembered novels about such situations that had seemed at the time the culmination of passion and romance. In those books wise heroines bravely
transcended
such traumas. She too in time would do the same, if only time would wait.

She slept fitfully through the night and woke to the early morning. Before the window hung the gauze cage. Within it the butterfly stirred, silver and ghostly in the half-light, as if not of this earth. She watched its weary fluttering until the sun filled out its wings and the colour burned the room. She got up then and let it free, releasing it from the cage and the thread. It flew up into the still, pink sky. She watched it from the window, standing before the growing day, reborn as surely from the night as she hoped her own life was now.

Reggie had left that day after a noontime nap. He insisted on returning early to the office, to prepare for an excursion to collect rent from a village. He left and the heat felt thick upon her, she longed to wash it away. The bathroom was airless; its windows, small for privacy, looked over the servants' quarters. At this time of day the heat stopped work and drugged the mind. Bony dogs and servants slept, chickens picked about the yard. On her flesh the sluice of cold water made Amy draw breath. Looking through the wooden slats of the window she suddenly saw Reggie appear upon a path that led from the back of his office to this part of the compound, unseen from the front verandah. He scanned the house briefly but did not see her. Almost at once the woman Puteh stepped out from behind a flowering bush. Reggie stopped without surprise, as if her appearance was expected. He nodded, taking her briefly by the elbow, pushing her before him. The bush shielded them from view of the servants'
quarters.
They walked back a distance until they reached a building that served sometimes as a guest house. Here
they left the path, a clump of trees hiding them from sight.