by Meira Chand
She was in the house again, filled at every turn by the substance of Matthew. She felt possessive of each detail. The present was like a hand about her; it steered her on and she was limp within it. She placed the portfolio shyly on the table before him, he opened it with a smile. She had finished the sketches of all the temples they had visited, even the Inari shrine.
‘They’re good, very good,’ he said, looking each over carefully as he sucked his pipe. Her contentment at his praise filled the morning like the heavy golden light, burning again upon the rugs. He held out his arms to her. He watched her undress, she let down her hair and ran to him naked across the room.
‘You look like a nymph. A nymph,’ he laughed and carried her to the bed. And again it began, as it had before – everything she could ask for.
‘I love you,’ she said, ‘I love you.’
‘Oh, Amy,’ he sighed, but those same words in reply did not pass his lips. It did not seem to matter. What she felt was enough to provide for them both. She raised herself this time above him, to follow the lines of his body with her lips and hands.
‘God,’ he groaned. ‘Are you a woman or a devil?’ Again she wished nothing for herself, nothing but what she could give. And this time she was bolder than before, sure of their affinity, sure of her own expertise.
‘I’m anything you want me to be,’ she laughed. ‘If you wish to debauch me, I’m infinitely debauchable. If you wish for purity, you can find it with me.’ It seemed from that one sphere where their bodies met there was nothing they could not achieve, no emotion they could not find together. And suddenly, she feared all she stood before. If she committed herself to such a relationship her life would be blown to bits. She would gladly face that for Matthew, but he, she knew, was not a man to disrupt his life for her. If she wished for his love she must control her own. She must accept the limitations he imposed.
‘I have decided,’ he told her afterwards as she lay quietly against him, ‘that you have more than a little of the devil in you.’ And he laughed in satisfaction.
‘I’ll never get to heaven, then,’ she replied.
‘Dear Amy. To get to heaven you have to go through hell. And having found heaven you have to go back through hell again to pay for having been there. Heaven’s a dangerous place and always exacts its price,’ Matthew said.
‘I don’t care, as long as I’m near you,’ she said.
‘I have told you before, I’m not the man you think. I’m not a conventional man,’ he answered.
‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘Tell me, then, how terrible you are.’
‘You could never be the only one,’ he said. ‘It is possible, you know, to love more than one woman.’
Her mind was full again of Edwina May. She knew nothing of him beyond what he wished to show her; he did not speak much about himself. She stood outside his life as surely as if she were before a wall. Everything behind was secret.
‘And if I were like other women I would not be here with you,’ she reminded him. He laughed and ran a finger down her arm.
‘I long for freedom from hypocrisy, to do what one does without concealment, without shame. One day men and women will live like that,’ he said.
‘How will that ever be?’ she asked. ‘Men maybe, but I … I can never forget at the back of my mind what I am doing and the price I may pay.’
‘Oh, Amy. The world is changing. Women are not necessarily now the prisoners of modesty and delicacy. There is a New Woman everywhere. Yokohama is so far from the centre of the intellectual world,’ Matthew said.
Amy’s mind filled again with the image of Edwina. ‘Like Edwina?’ she asked.
‘If you want, yes. She is brave and free and lives her own life as she wishes. Many women now live as she does in her kind of circles.’
‘And I suppose you men are only too happy to take advantage of such women,’ she said, in sudden apprehension of her own situation with him.
‘No, Amy. I do not take advantage of you. You come to me of your own free will. In doing so you acknowledge the truth about yourself. That takes courage, even if reckless in your case. And I am aware of the risks you take for me.’ He bent and kissed her.
‘How can you know anything?’ Amy told him. ‘Love complicates a woman’s life much more than any man’s.’
‘I know,’ he replied.
‘And children,’ Amy said, thinking guiltily of Cathy and Tom. ‘Children change a woman as they change no man. Husbands, lovers and children. What chance does any woman have between them? Edwina has no children and no husband. It’s easy for her to be free.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Matthew. ‘Women are not educated yet for anything but subordination. You have a good brain.’ He tapped her head. ‘Learn to use it, Amy. A woman may be different, but she’s equal to any man.’
‘I’ve never been encouraged to believe that. Certainly not by my husband, or my mother.’ Mrs Sidley’s dark form stood suddenly beside the bed. Amy turned and shivered.
‘Be true to yourself,’ said Matthew.
‘Can’t you see I’m doing my best to make a start?’ Amy answered.
Matthew laughed. ‘The gifts of the flesh and the senses, forbidden though they are, remain a key that if never turned corrodes and then despairs. Look at all the sour old women of Yokohama, fleshy with gossip and frustration.’ He took her again in his arms. ‘Yes, you’ve made a start.’
*
There was nothing now in her life but the waiting for Matthew and the moments to be had with him. That secret life was reality, and the reality of every day the fantasy of life. The faces of her children came and went before her, brought forward by Rachel to be kissed, scrubbed and shiny from their baths, milky-mouthed and boisterous. She laughed and bent to them, enfolding them in her arms, and knew the love she gave to them was the love that came from Matthew. He left nothing within her untouched. And at moments now she was obsessed by the wish for a child from him, a reckless, terrible wish. With its thought she no longer cared if, in the eyes and the bones of this child, Yokohama would discern it had no Redmore blood. It would be of Matthew and herself. She could think no further. The world had fallen away; she lived each moment on a pinhead of time, emotion and fantasy. She would have met him every day in Tokyo, in Yokohama, in daylight, in front of people, uncaring. Unaware of anything but him. Him. But he would not have it.
‘It is not necessary, Amy,’ he told her. They sat naked together on the side of the bed. She said nothing; she could see it was not what he wanted. She was always aware, within her own turmoil of feelings, of that isolation he insisted upon, and by which he controlled their relationship. If she did not obey he would turn kindly but firmly away. He spaced their meetings agonizingly, but from one to the next she was prepared to wait.
‘Enough, Amy, is as good as a feast.’ His hands slowly followed the contours of her limbs that she would have given in one meeting, again and again. Had he wished it. She saw now that, as much as he wanted to control the madness that consumed her so that it did not drown them both, for him the infrequency of their meetings really was enough. He was a sensuous, not a sexual man. Beside him Reggie was a bull, all bristles, flesh and sexuality, no hues beneath the primal. At the thought of Reggie she felt repulsed and turned again to Matthew, to the simplicity of their nakedness.
She loved the journey to Tokyo. Rich, soft hills of bamboo filled the windows of the train. The land, worked and crammed into tiny valleys was seductive in intensity. The light melted over it, luminous as the feelings within herself. The fields gave way to a litter of rickety wooden houses growing into the town and the great terminus of Shimbashi. This acceleration of urban density, instead of seeming ugly, appeared only to match and keep pace with the heightening of her own emotions. Until, at the pivot of it all, she rushed out of the station to the waiting rikishas with barely breath to bid Mabel goodbye.
He had been away in the interior, she had not seen him for two weeks. It seemed she too had been absent.
Only in his presence could she come to life again. She stretched out like a cat to be stroked, yielding, opening, spreading. And afterwards it was as if she was drunk, unconscious and replete. As if she were cleansed and emptied from the deepest recess of herself. She lived for nothing but to be filled by him, until there was no place within her that he did not possess. She wished his contours could be burned upon her flesh, so that the welding of a few moments would last upon her forever.
She sensed his apprehension at this violence he ignited, an abandonment she was helpless to control. He feared it would destroy the careful architecture of his life. And yet she knew he waited for all that her own excesses could awaken in him, as if she had consumed him.
Once, within the glass face of a clock, she saw their bodies reflected upon the bed, tangled and moving, absorbed in each other, and knew with a shock what he had already seen, that her own sensuality would destroy them. She wondered then how long he would allow it.
‘This cannot be sin, for I’m happy,’ she whispered. Her own fullness burst in her. She turned and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.
Matthew smiled. ‘Maybe that’s the difference here. They’ve never heard of our horny old Devil. They have no sense of sin, or evil as we perceive it. Perhaps the naturalness of their lives places them nearer God. Maybe in the preface of the book I should touch upon the matter.’
‘Is it finished, then?’ she asked, raising herself upon an elbow.
‘Yes. Soon you shall have it in your hand,’ Matthew said.
‘And will we then begin another?’
‘Oh, Amy,’ he laughed. ‘Insatiable.’ But he gave no answer to her question, instead he related the happenings of his time in the interior.
‘Perhaps,’ he chuckled, ‘they know of the Devil in the form of suspicion. You know how bad the epidemics of cholera and smallpox are this year. In the countryside each village proclaims itself spotless and accuses its neighbours of harbouring the contagions,’ Matthew told her. ‘In one of the villages they would not give us accommodation, saying we had brought the demon cholera with us. It was night and raining hard and the next village was miles away. Eventually, begrudgingly, they called forth some Shinto priests. They arrived under umbrellas in black lacquer hats and struck us on the backs with naked swords, to exorcize the demon. After that we were sullenly given some lodgings. So you see,’ Matthew concluded, ‘I feel myself purged now absolutely of the Devil and protected against all evil.’
She traced his features with a finger and wondered if sometimes, in his clever way, he did not trick the world and also himself. In his face she saw lines of sadness, dissipation and sometimes despair.
‘You know,’ said Mabel primly on the way back in the train, ‘you must endeavour to be more careful. Everyone is talking. You could at least hide your happiness – that much discretion should not be too hard.’ She had been to tea at the Belgian Legation where Baroness d’Anethan had introduced her to Mr Gerald Lowther, the new bachelor First Secretary at the British Legation. His sister had come to Japan with him to act as his official hostess. The Baroness had suggested Mabel help her get up some theatricals for the Red Cross.
‘It all sounds utterly boring,’ Amy said.
‘That may well be,’ replied Mabel. ‘Things do tend to bore in the mundane world. We don’t all live up in the clouds, like you.’ Amy’s face as she stared out at the landscape was mirrored to Mabel in the darkening window. ‘Are you listening to me? I’m not in the habit of wasting my breath talking to a waxwork.’ The lights were on in the carriage. Beyond the window trees and fields passed through the reflection of Amy’s face, like fantasies through her mind.
‘I heard you,’ Amy replied, turning to look at Mabel.
‘And what have you to say?’ Mabel asked.
‘I’m as careful as can be,’ Amy shrugged, a sense of danger far away, buffered by emotion.
‘You’ve not a grain of sense nor dignity nor anything else as far as I can see, but the mightiest attack of stupidity,’ Mabel snapped. She had recently broken up with Douglas.
‘You’re just jealous because of Douglas,’ Amy replied.
Mabel looked as if she had been slapped. The wheels of the train vibrated loudly through the carriage over a difficult piece of track. Mabel raised her voice. ‘When I remember how heavenly good Douglas was to me, I’m all contrition. But that’s nothing to do with my advice to you.’
Amy turned away uncaring, something leaping in her at the thought again of Matthew, although she had just left him. The wait until they met again sprawled out before her. She closed her eyes and felt his touch upon her body. Mabel looked at her in distress.
‘I really don’t know what you see in him. He wouldn’t be my “cup of tea”, as you English say,’ Mabel said. Amy laughed softly, Mabel lapsed into silence.
The train gave a sudden jerk and slowed down into a station. Doors banged in the second- and third-class carriages as Japanese shuffled noisily in and out on their clogs, belongings in baskets tied up with blue cloth. It had begun to rain, the platform was crowded with paper umbrellas. The whistle sounded. Nobody had disturbed the peace of the first-class carriage. Amy and Mabel sat on in their corner.
‘You must control yourself,’ Mabel continued as the train drew out of the station. ‘You’ll come a cropper if you go on in this manner. You’ve lost your sense of proportion. The whole town is talking.’ Amy’s expression remained far away. ‘Why can’t you use some calculation? It can’t go on like this,’ Mabel scolded.
Amy was not the same person, the change was all about her, thought Mabel. The pulse that filled her was almost obscene. Discretion to Mabel was imperative to her own involvements. She crafted them like a play, delighting in her control of events. Amy threw herself at circumstance as if she faced a sea. Her survival was a matter of luck, a quality Mabel had learned not to trust.
Amy turned her face to the window and smiled at her own reflection. Her eyes stared back at her from the glass, naked in intensity. Men looked at her wherever she went, as if she emitted a mysterious scent. It was, she knew, her own awareness, exuding from her like a light.
*
Tom coughed with a horrible rasp, the sound tearing through his body. Amy sat him upon her knee and made him inhale eucalyptus oil from the corner of a handkerchief. He screamed and squirmed his way off her lap to toddle over to the coal scuttle. He plunged his hands into it before she could stop him and chuckled asthmatically. From her bed Cathy watched him, listless with fever. The crisis was over, according to Dr Charles. He had been that morning and decided that Tom, with some cough linctus, could return to the world. Cathy still needed an assortment of tonics and medicines. The Bluff was stricken with influenza, the worst epidemic in years. Amy had herself been down with it mildly. She had built up an immunity, said Dr Charles, by nursing the children through their attacks. Reggie had escaped entirely. Dr Charles could not understand it.
Tom rubbed his hands over his face and danced about like a blackamoor. Cathy frowned at Amy. ‘Mama, keep him quiet. I’m going to be sick.’
Amy looked sternly at Rachel who rushed over to Tom. Rachel had been first with influenza; Amy had nursed her too. Tom screamed as Rachel picked him up. He rubbed his black face on her white overall and grinned at her annoyance.
Amy observed her resignedly. As amah Rachel was no longer adequate to the needs of two growing children. She hoped it would not be long before Jessie Flack arrived from England. Mrs Sidley had arranged it as promised. Jessie Flack was happy about the undertaking and the long journey to Japan. She had given in her notice to her employers in Barnstaple, but it might still be months before she reached Japan. It would be a relief, thought Amy, to have a brisk English girl in charge of the children instead of lethargic Rachel. She was impatient for Jessie’s arrival.
‘Take Tom downstairs, Rachel, but don’t let him out,’ Amy instructed. When they had left the room she went to sit with Cathy, wringing out a towel in a bowl of cold water a
nd placing it on the child’s hot head.
‘You’ll soon be better now, my darling.’
‘It feels nice, Mama.’ The child’s dark eyes stared up at her, even in suffering self-possessed. Her maturity was different from conquering Tom, strutting about, bellowing his passion for life. Amy saw the depths in Cathy and loved them, fearful for the child. She changed the cold, wet rag on her head until she fell asleep.
She sat back then in the rocking chair and extracted Matthew’s letter from her pocket. He too was unwell. ‘A wretched bout of influenza, like yourself,’ he wrote. She hoped it was influenza and not the beginning of excuses to dampen their affair. She waited in dread for a time when he might begin to tire of her and distance her slowly from himself. She had not seen him for a few weeks due to all the illness. Cooped up with the children in their miserable incarceration, she realized with a shock the degree to which she had abandoned them during the months with Matthew. She tended them now with renewed dedication, to assuage her guilt. But looking out of the window at the setting sun over Cathy’s sleeping form, she found her thoughts returned too easily to Matthew.
*
It was the time of maples and chrysanthemums, garden parties and the social season. At last the children were well and Amy able to visit Mabel, who had kept her distance throughout the infections. Amy confided her fears about Matthew’s letter.
‘I hope it’s not an excuse to stay away from me,’ she confessed.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Mabel decided, ‘your emotions are just all battered about, locked up with those children so long. Why should Matthew Armitage be immune to influenza?’
‘I do feel a bit debilitated. My imagination is running away with me,’ Amy agreed.
‘Well, then,’ laughed Mabel, watering blooms in her conservatory from an elegant china jug, ‘we must do our best to cheer you up.’ Her good spirits had returned. She had made it up with Douglas and could show some magnanimity for Amy’s state of mind. ‘I have wangled two invitations for the Imperial Chrysanthemum Garden Party. And you know how difficult that is. Only the diplomatic corps and government officials are invited. I have arranged it, and now Patrick cannot go. You shall come instead.’