The Painted Cage (31 page)

‘She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Who’d have thought it? Oh, the shame. And her family in Somerset so well thought of, so respectable. And the master such a nice man, too. How can he allow it? I’ve only read about such goings-on in novels.’

‘As for Mr Redmore, there are things they say about him too. Of course he is a man and all men are like
that,
though not my master, I must say. Don’t be so trusting. You should take care in a house like that. You must protect yourself,’ Bertha clarified.

‘The master’s all right. He’s kind. He likes me,’ Jessie said.

‘That’s
what I mean,’ Bertha replied.

‘Well,
I
didn’t mean it like
that.
’
Jessie was shocked and blushed.

‘You be careful,’ Bertha warned. The piano had stopped, Bertha retied her bonnet. ‘You could lose your own reputation in a house like that.’

Tom appeared suddenly at Jessie’s knee. ‘Come on, Jekky. Finished. Stupid dancing. Stupid Miss Fricklesby.’ Tom tugged at Jessie’s sleeve. She shook him free and stared at Bertha anxiously.

‘What d’you mean? What can I do?’ she inquired, struck suddenly by insinuations she had been ignorant of before. Beside her a window looked out onto the street and a group of squatting, emaciated
rikisha
runners, their greasy faces wide-boned and grinning. One stood up to urinate against a wall. Jessie Flack looked away in haste, his sudden exposure thumping through her. All at once she hated Yokohama. She longed for England, a place where, whatever might happen, you still knew exactly where you were. People behaved as expected, and even the discomforts of quarters or the idiosyncrasies of employers were reliable in their unchanging familiarity. Here was only an alien land whose ways and speech were
incomprehensible.
And besides this, in the small, enclosed world that should have been familiar nothing was what it seemed. People who appeared upright and English behaved in unimaginable ways. An earth that looked docile and solid could erupt and crack and kill without warning. A snake could slide from a flowering bush and the sky could darken with vindictive force to smash homes or blow you from a cliff. In good faith and
innocence
she had journeyed all these miles to this dangerous deception.

‘Come on, Jekky. Let’s go Bluff Gardens now.’ Tom stamped his foot impatiently. Cathy came up with the Phelps children. Jessie and Bertha stood up.

‘You just be careful,’ Bertha hissed.

She wore a grey silk dress fitted tight with a neckline so low it made you blush. She was going out to dinner, but it was early yet to change into a dress like that. It meant
he
must be coming. When she bent, the neckline was enough to incite the male of any age. Her own son reached up a hand from the nursery table to stroke her soft flesh in bewilderment. Jessie Flack pursed her lips.

‘Did Master Tom take the cough syrup, Jessie?’ Amy laughed. The blue of her eyes was dark, almost violet. She looked so innocent, and yet the things that mouth, that body must have done. It made you angry. It made you sick to even think about it.

‘Yes, Ma’am, he drank it like a good boy,’ Jessie replied, her eyes giving nothing. Many men, Bertha had said. She went about with them, alone. Her mouth was wide, the upper lip as full as the lower, always soft, moist and coloured. They never cracked like Jessie’s own lips in the winter, peeled until they were sore. Such things were not a matter of station, they were apportionments of God – or in this case, most clearly, the Devil.

‘Good boy? Yes, course, good boy. Always good boy.’ Tom held up his arms to his mother. In the nursery the setting sun awoke the room and blazed like fire upon the windows of Mrs Jackson’s boarding house, across
neighbouring gardens. Amy laughed and picked Tom up. He kissed her, coiling about her like a small monkey.

‘Don’t spoil me, Tom. I’m going out,’ she pleaded.

She tried to put him down, but he clung to her, burying his face in her breast, nuzzling noisily until she ripped him off her in exasperation.

‘When we grow up,’ Cathy announced, withdrawing her attention from a book, ‘the Reverend Percival told us in Sunday School we must wear dresses to our chins. Dresses like you wear tempt the Devil and send you to hell. Can a dress send you to hell, Mama?’

‘Nonsense,’ Amy exclaimed. ‘Old Reverend Percival knows nothing about fashion. Don’t listen to him, my darling.’ She laughed, but Jessie saw a blush heighten her cheeks. You couldn’t deceive a child, Jessie thought. And what an example she set them. Their own mother, the shame of it.

They heard the sudden knock on the front door
downstairs
and sounds of entry. Amy patted her hair, kissed her hands to them and darted from the room. They stared after her in silence. Slowly Cathy returned her attention to her book.

‘Drink your milk, Master Tom,’ Jessie admonished to establish normality. The sound of Dicky Huckle’s voice came up clearly from the hall. Amy laughed flirtatiously in reply. Then there was the shutting of the drawing room door, and silence once again.

‘Huckle, duckle, muckle, buckle. One, two, buckle my shoe.’ Tom gurgled the words into his milk.

‘
Mr
Huckle, if you please,’ Cathy instructed. She returned her eyes to her book but did not read, a frown pulled her brows together. Jessie watched them, angry at the harmony Amy’s intrusion had dispersed. She was fond of the children and they were disturbed. Anybody could see that.

‘Huckle, duckle, muckle.’ Tom blew bubbles into his milk.

‘Master Tom,’ Jessie warned.

‘Going see Buckle my shoe,’ Tom suddenly decided and scrambled off his chair, scuttling from the room before
Jessie could catch him. She did not hurry. She let him go, shouting after him, following, but short of a pace that would intercept. She let him reach and open the door of the drawing room.

It was darkening, the small, low lamps reflected. They faced the mirror together, their backs to Jessie. She saw their faces, side by side within the glass. The man’s hands were upon the woman’s bare shoulders, clasping them, her head swung back against him. Her neck and that deep vee of naked flesh, spreading fuller and lower and softer than ever in the diffused light, seemed to overflow. Jessie Flack could not take her eyes from Amy Redmore’s
brimming
, luminous breast. The room fell away around the two people before the mirror. Anger filled Jessie. It seemed to screw up into a tight ball every cell within her body. Many men, Bertha had said. Many men. The words echoed in her head. How could the master allow it?

There was a small carved stone on a velvet ribbon he had tied about her neck. A present. In the glass they admired it. Amy Redmore smiled at Dicky Huckle, the soft mouth opening, spreading, enticing him. Her body arched against him, her perfume filled the room. She laughed in a low, soft sound at the back of her throat, an animal sound. She had that elusive power, the command of men. She was naked always in their eyes. It was the Devil at work within her. The man dropped his head to kiss the warm hollow of her neck, gently, briefly. Jessie let out a cry. Dicky Huckle’s hands fell quickly to his sides. Tom rushed into the room.

‘One, two, buckle my shoe.’ Tom danced about. ‘Go away, I hate you, Buckle, silly muckle,’ Tom screamed.

Amy turned to Jessie who stood, thin and stricken, in the doorway. ‘Take him away. How dare you let him come here!’ She hissed like a full, white-breasted swan disturbed upon her nest. Jessie scooped him up and left the room. Amy slammed the door upon her.

It was silent. They were not yet back. The children slept, Jessie lay upon her bed. The blood throbbed through her when she remembered the image of them before the
mirror. She sat up, holding her head, her chest gripped by something hard. Many men, Bertha had said. The things she must have done, wicked as a whore. Jessie got up and drank down a glass of water. The mirror before her threw up her thin face like a scar upon its spotted surface. Her face was not one that mirrors warmed to; they did not expand to greet her as they did Amy Redmore. She had made mistakes, she had even sinned, thought Jessie, taking account of her life, but she had never yet lain with any man and never would like a common whore. She stood up and ran a hand across her forehead. If only the image of them, so ripe it had filled the room, would leave her. She opened the door and went onto the landing. The house was still, the stairwell dark; a lamp burned in the hall below for the Redmores’ return. The pendulum of the grandfather clock knocked back each minute; they would not return for hours. Jessie opened the door of Amy’s room.

Rachel had turned back the bed and put on a low lamp. She had spread out the nightgown with its full lace yoke and satin buttons. There were embroidered silk slippers upon the floor, side by side, waiting. Silver brushes, bottles of perfumes, a glass bowl of dusting powder, Jessie picked up and examined each in turn. From the wardrobe came the smell of lavender bags and the obsessive power of silk, spangled and patterned, worked or thin as water, that had offered her up from within its soft swathings to whichever man she chose to spread herself beneath. Jessie Flack clenched her fist and tore a dress from its hanger, a soft fall of gauze, a dress like she had never worn, the apparel of another race. She held it up before her. It fell loosely against her, its neckline limp and disinterested upon her flat chest. Its colour drained her so that even the mirror seemed impatient to discard her. She stuffed the dress back into the cupboard and sat down on a stool before the dressing table. Behind her in the glass was the huge carved bed upon which Amy Redmore slept with her husband.
She
who went to other men.
He
who went to other women. It made no sense and it was shameful. She, Jessie, had been deceived, her priorities violated and,
according to Bertha, her own reputation was in danger through these iniquities.

She looked down at her hands and beyond them at the wastepaper basket Rachel had forgotten to empty. A silk handkerchief had been discarded there, because of a tear. Jessie bent to pick it up; a mended tear would not bother her – she had no men to catch. As she retrieved it there fell away the small shreds of a torn-up letter. Jessie Flack picked up and turned over the pieces: ‘… free woman I would …’ she read, ‘… a passion for you …
happiness
my heart … love … loving …’. Each piece yielded words that made her blood throb anew. Suddenly she laughed and laughed again. She knelt down beside the basket, retrieving the bits of paper in a ragged little pile. Soon she could find no more and placed them in the handkerchief, wrapping it about them.

She turned in dismay as the door opened, but it was only Rachel, giggling, gormless, half-caste orphan Rachel. She had brought a jug of water to leave upon the
wash-stand.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked in surprise, but without accusation in her round, heavy face.

‘Never you mind,’ … Jessie said firmly, getting quickly to her feet. ‘Master Tom lost a toy, I was looking for it.’ Rachel’s eyes were upon the silk handkerchief clutched in Jessie’s hand. Jessie waited for the girl to place the jug on the stand and then followed her out, shutting the door behind her.

She undressed and lay down again on her bed, no longer alive with feelings fierce as pain. She had caught the Devil by his tail. She held Amy Redmore in her hand, exposed and observable. It was enough to make her smile in the dark and narrow room.

The Bluff Gardens expanded in the sun, the green geography of lawns and paths was sculptural and still. Bertha Kaufmann unwrapped the silk handkerchief, and Jessie turned her body upon the seat to shield them from the amahs squatting on the grass. Cathy and Charlie Phelps bowled hoops about the bandstand, Tom crouched with Mary and Eliza Phelps to examine a dead bird.

‘And then … there they were as Master Tom threw open the door. I could scarce believe my eyes. Oh the shame of it. Nearly naked she was in that dress – flaunting herself, tempting him.’ Jessie shut her eyes.

‘And the child, he saw too, all of this?’ Bertha
determined.
Jessie pursed her lips and nodded.

‘It is very bad. Very dangerous.’ Bertha shook her head. She turned over the bits of paper on her lap, quickly matching their ragged edges, her head on one side. Jessie looked anxiously at her impassive face.

‘It is good you found this,’ Bertha reflected at last. ‘It will be a useful thing to have in your hand. For who is knowing what may happen in a house like that? We must know exactly what it says. I will keep it. I will put it together. You cannot do these things in that house, you may be seen. You must collect any more you can find. People like us sometimes need such things. Life is not always behaving as we would wish.’ Bertha’s eyes were bright and consuming.

‘Now tell me again,’ she lowered her voice, her
detachment
breaking for a moment. ‘I must know everything to advise you properly.’ Jessie nodded and began again, the words taking hold of her, growing and embroidering. Her heart beat and her belly contracted in a strange way. She could not stop the words, filling out the image of Amy Redmore and Dicky Huckle before the mirror until, like a sketch beneath a finished painting, the image faded and she was left with the brilliance of her own work of art.

Bertha nodded, her eyes glazed in her solid face. Her voice cracked as she spoke and she stopped to clear her throat. ‘Collect the letters,’ she ordered. ‘And watch. Tell me everything.’

It was Sunday, but Tom had no sense of occasion. He smacked a spoon onto his peas, scattering them over the table. He laughed as they rolled upon the floor, Cathy looked at him in disgust.

‘You’ll go back to the nursery if you cannot behave,’ Amy told him. Sunday lunch was a formal meal, the only one for which, with Jessie, the children joined them at
the table. Cathy piously opened her mouth for a neatly speared forkful of peas. Tom screamed loudly in defiance.

‘Let the boy alone,’ said Reggie, washing down his beef with a tankard of beer. ‘He’s a Redmore. Needs to break out now and then. I’d do the same if I were molly-coddled like him, by a crowd of women.’ His voice was primed with beer, empty bottles stood upon the sideboard like depleted ammunition.