The Painted Cage (23 page)

In her time away in Somerset Amy had fully expected Reggie to use his bachelor year in just the way he had, but he seemed glad to see her back. He was warm and companionable and full of excitement at reunion with the children. He produced armfuls of presents and made them laugh until they were sick, bouncing them high in the air. He was full of interest about Amy's year at home, the people met, the changes seen, the commodities brought back for use in Yokohama. And of his time alone he spoke with the frankness they had agreed upon. She had expected no less than he told her.

And yet, now she was free to take command of her life, to step out in an equal way, she found she had lost interest in all that had once excited. She reviewed the prospective men about her, all eligible for affairs, and felt neither interest nor desire. The simple bedding she had sought with Guy le Ferrier seemed long ago and
inadequate
now. She did not even know what it was she wanted. When she left Japan on the
Empress
of
China
she had even doubted she would return. But contrary to reverie, it had surprised her to find Somerset a dull and earthbound place, lacking in all she suddenly
remembered
it lacking so many years before. Its inadequacies had caused her to leave it then, for adventure and romance.

Entrenched once more in her old room in the red-brick angularity of Cranage, it seemed her life had not evolved. Because nothing had changed at Cranage, so it seemed
nothing could change in herself. The old house laid its grip upon her, sterner than before, as if already it spied the deviations of her spirit. Her parents in their joy at her return petted and fussed her, indulging their
grandchildren
in a way they had never indulged their daughter.

‘The children should have a nursery governess.' said Mrs Sidley, ‘a good solid English girl who can instil the right manners and appreciations, instead of one of those native amahs, kind and diligent though they may be. A relative of the blacksmith has recently come to live in the village. I hear his eldest daughter is an excellent girl – she's in service already in Barnstaple. Flack – Jessie Flack – I think is her name. I shall talk to the family when next she is home.'

Amy saw her parents now not as she had in childhood, but as two people, flawed and scarred. They rubbed upon each other like rusty flints that could not flame. The old house absorbed their resentments into its dark, still corners. But in spite of these insights, her return to the role of daughter threw her immediately back into the position of childhood from which she knew, whatever her age, she could never escape in the house. The same tensions contracted about her, the same impatience
flowered
within. In the house and the routine of its occupants, the same circumspection filled each day. And Sarah was no more across the hill. She had failed to make the brilliant match her parents had expected. Instead she had married a vicar and now managed a draughty vicarage, her time punctuated by the needs of a brood of delicate children. Amy went to stay but left within a few days. Sarah was constantly distracted by domestic matters in the midst of conversation. Their children fought, and infected each other with animosity and disease. And between the women something had changed. Amy found she had grown wilfully far from the small world that had nurtured her.

Yokohama claimed her mind now as once Somerset had done. The tenuous life of the Bluff echoed across the world, demanding her return. She became bored and
restless
and seemed no longer to fit. The exotic diet of foreign
life had changed her perspective forever. Before long she began to count the days until she could return. And yet, when she did, it distressed her to find Yokohama oppressive. Here too she seemed to have lost the knack of living. She became depressed. Mabel's flippancy annoyed her, as did the ceaseless smiles on endless faces rushing about the meaningless pleasures of the day.

She had not seen much of Mabel since returning to Yokohama. Mabel was busy with numerous projects for expanding her home and expanding the scope of
committees
for charity, welfare and pleasure. She had turned, she said, from a social butterfly into a social benefactress. Amy could see little difference, except a diminution in her life of the unending presence of Mabel. Their meetings were fewer – amiable as before, but Amy was quieter, Mabel spoke more. It seemed useless to explain to Mabel the emptiness within her and the impatience she suddenly felt with Yokohama's chronic aimlessness, or with the committees Mabel now delighted in, winding their malicious, opinionated roots about the base of
Yokohama,
distorting values, flaying lives, puffing themselves up like inflatable things upon which the town must ride. She felt sick at heart without reason. There was nothing she wanted to do, no one she wanted to meet. It had been in this mood that she met again Matthew Armitage.

She passed him in a
rikisha
as he walked towards the Club Hotel, where he stayed when in Yokohama. She was tiffining there with Mrs Easely. Matthew lived in Tokyo where he had a post at the university, but two days a week he also taught at an institution in Yokohama. Amy had not expected to see him; she thought he might have left Japan, his term of work expired. He greeted her without surprise, as if he had seen her yesterday.

‘They're performing Chikamatsu's
Ikutama
Shinju
down in Isezakicho-dori today. I thought I'd go but the crowds are enormous. Danjūro is appearing.' As usual he began in the middle of an incomprehensible conversation.

‘You shouldn't forget how culturally ignorant I am, you know,' Amy laughed. ‘You'll have to explain what you're talking about. I just don't understand.'

‘Kabuki,' he announced, helping her from the
rikisha.
Beside him again, a part of herself – asleep or dispossessed – was immediate again. At Miyanoshita, at the Fujiya Hotel, he had made her feel this way.

‘I hope I shall see you later,' she said shyly, making her way towards where Mrs Easely waited.

‘Then I shall live impatiently with the same hope,' Matthew said. Amy looked at him in surprise, but his eyes were as level as usual.

He sat by himself in the dining room. From the angle of their tables she observed him unhampered beneath conversation with Mrs Easely. He took no notice of her, his attention tied to a book. She wished suddenly to be near him with a fierceness she had felt about nothing since returning. She was so agitated she could barely eat her food. There seemed no way, unobtrusively, for things to conspire to this end, but fate surprised her with sudden benevolence. Finishing his lunch, Matthew Armitage approached their table on his way out to be stopped by Mrs Easely, who appeared to know him well. She invited him to join them for coffee and, unaware of their previous acquaintance, introduced him to Amy.

‘Mrs Redmore and I have already met. In fact I once asked her to work with me on a book, illustrating wild flowers,' Matthew said, sitting down at their table.

‘And didn't you, Amy?' Mrs Easely asked, pouring coffee from a jug as Matthew lit his pipe. The smell of his tobacco awoke in Amy feelings she had forgotten. She shook her head.

‘No. It turned out not to be the right time. Tom was born a while after.'

‘During lunch I have been considering if I might again put forward the same suggestion,' Matthew said.

‘Didn't you finish that book?' Amy asked.

‘Oh yes, that was published last year. This is a book on indigenous cults of Shinto and Buddhist worship. It would require sketches of temples and shrines. You did say you might be interested in a future book,' Matthew puffed on his pipe, looking at her from small, keen eyes.
‘Of course,' he added, ‘we would once more approach your husband.

‘He wouldn't object now,' Amy replied. Nothing seemed real in the dining room of the Club Hotel. The smell of food, tobacco and furniture polish grew intense below the hum of conversation and the clink of china. She did not trust the sudden richness her wishes had invoked.

She spoke to Reggie that night, glad to have something of substance to uphold her part of their pact.

‘Mr Armitage has asked me again to illustrate a book. I met him today by accident with Mrs Easely at the Club Hotel. I'm sure you would have no objections now. Our life has changed so much,' Amy reminded Reggie. She paced before him in the drawing room, trying to pacify Tom. She had brought him downstairs with her for Rachel, tired from a day spent with a bilious Cathy, seemed unable to control him. He quietened on her shoulder and began to suck his thumb. Reggie looked at her impatiently.

‘Why don't you employ another amah if Rachel cannot cope? I don't know any man whose evenings are disturbed in this manner. The nursery's the place for all this. You're spoiling the boy.'

‘Poor little mite! He's just overtired; he didn't sleep well today.' Amy turned her head to kiss Tom's cheek and took no notice of Reggie's comments. She was glad of the distraction Tom provided at this vital moment. She could see that Reggie, sipping crème de menthe in an armchair after his dinner, was doing his best to show no struggle now that his proposition teetered upon reality. His encouragement did not invade his eyes.

‘It's splendid about this book, of course.' Reggie's voice was full of doubt. Amy stroked Tom's passive back. Reggie was silent before he spoke again, deep in uncomfortable thought.

‘I can't stand the man,' he burst out. ‘I'm surprised at your interest in him; I wouldn't have thought he was your type. I can't see what would attract
any
woman. However, there's no doubt of his usefulness. He's in thick with all
the right people. I was expecting some dashing young merchant or consul.' Reggie stopped, then laughed, the crème de menthe slipped dangerously near the rim of his glass as he belched suddenly in surprise. He had
measured
the competition before him.

Tom stirred and raised his head and looked directly at his father. He gave a sudden sob that turned into a howl. Reggie frowned and got out of his chair to pour another drink. ‘I come home for some peace and quiet, not this,' he said. ‘Take him back to Rachel. Where are you going to find the time for all this silly stuff with that silly fellow?' Reggie pushed a cork savagely back into a bottle. Amy left the room to take Tom upstairs before Reggie could change his mind.

Nothing would make her use an acquaintance with Matthew Armitage for an ulterior end. Reggie would not understand, so it was pointless to discuss it. She knew why so little in Yokohama appeared fulfilling. She had aspired to change, she realized now, the first time she met Matthew Armitage that day on Isezakicho-dori. He had shown her then, in a few words and a look, the disparity between the person she was and the person she should be.

She met him the first time in Motomachi. Her
rikisha
followed his through the pungent streets of the native town, packed with people, dogs and carts, until they came to a narrow opening between a tumbledown house and a dealer in secondhand clothing. Behind lay a small, dusty temple, drab as the street outside. The paper doors of the temple were drawn back and in the sanctuary, on the altar, stood a statue of a figure wearing a red cotton bib. The place was silent and cool, perfumed lightly with incense. From the courtyard behind came the high note of a bird; a ginger cat appeared suddenly and observed them. She had never been in a temple before, except the one or two the tourists all visited up on the Bluff. They had inspired none of the feelings she felt now beside Matthew.

‘Who is the figure? Is it the Buddha? And why does it
wear a red bib?' she whispered into the silence. Matthew looked at her in surprise.

‘No, not Buddha, but Jizo, a popular
bodhisattva
of Japanese Buddhism who aids all suffering beings. He is regarded as the guardian deity of children. Bereaved mothers pray to him, sending in the bibs warm clothing for the small lost spirits.'

Amy felt ashamed to remember her own ignorant laughter at the garbed figures. There had been nothing pagan, nothing to laugh at, in the grief of a mother for a dead child. ‘And a
bodhisattva
?
What is that?' she
whispered
again.

‘Someone who has attained Buddhahood or
enlightenment,
but rejects the salvation of Nirvana and release from the wheel of life to return again to human birth to help others towards that end,' he explained.

She did not like to press him with the questions filling her. From behind the screen a nun appeared in loose robes and with a shaven head. She led them to a bare, mat-covered room before a small garden, like the room Amy remembered at the fortune teller's. A priest was seated on a cushion, writing at a low table. The afternoon sun streamed about his bent figure illuminating the darns in his worn black robe. He laid aside his brush and looked up, his face wrinkled and kindly. The cat walked in and curled up as they took cushions before the priest, whom Matthew had come to see. The old man's voice was deep and gentle. He was eighty-four, said Matthew, and writing a religious history of Japan to be completed in three hundred volumes. Two hundred and seventy-five were already finished, stacked in neatly bound
manuscripts
on a shelf behind him.

The nun returned with green tea and thin biscuits stamped with the Wheel of the Law. The cat rearranged itself and flexed its claws. Amy sipped the tea and listened to what little of the conversation Matthew, from time to time, remembered to translate. The infrequency of his translation left the flow of talk disjointed to her, and yet it was enough. Each phrase Matthew interpreted in sudden, guilty remembrance of her, breaking off from
communion with the priest, was so novel in content that it took time for her to digest.

‘He says he wishes to live only long enough to finish his history. His body is helpless and old, he wishes to die to obtain a new one. He is glad to feel he is nearing the Shore of the Sea of Death and Birth,' Matthew said without emotion. It was odd to hear someone talk so dispassionately of death, as if it was a practicality of no more importance than changing one's clothes.