The Japanese Girl Read Free Page B

…’
    â€˜Well, go on: what were you going to say?’
    â€˜Well, maybe they wanted somebody … better educated or something. Or with different interests. I should hope they don’t know you go racing every week!’
    It was typical of her, I thought, to show she felt I didn’t measure up to the job. How can anyone do well in life with a wife like that? I asked Yodi this and she said: ‘Jack, don’t think about her. I see why you are unhappy with her but don’t let that sort of talk put you down. Let us plan what we are going to do now. Do you now look for another job?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a pretty drastic idea. But first I want to see how the new man measures up.’
    In the night I had had drastic ideas, ideas that had frightened me, yet often as I rejected them during the next two weeks they kept coming back. And the longer I considered them, the more solid and feasible and acceptable they became.
    Cassell arrived and confirmed my suspicion. He was an adequate sort of chap with a hearty public school manner that I could see would have impressed the board. I tested him out gingerly on one or two points and he knew his accountancy well enough, but he came from an entirely different firm from Annerton’s and it would take him months to get the hang of things. Cassell was friendly to me because he needed my help, but when he had it all at his finger-tips he would be patronizing. I could see it coming. It would be Armitage all over again.
    And I couldn’t stand that. I wasn’t prepared to stand that. There were only two alternatives: I could look for a new job – and what chance had I of getting a new position much different from the old – and if that happened how long could I keep the flat for Yodi? How long in fact could I keep Yodi’s love and loyalty? The other alternative I stayed awake at nights considering. I had the guts to do it: I felt certain of that, because I was driven into a corner. But did I have the guts to carry it through? And, more important than all that, more important than anything I did, did Yodi have the courage and the love and the loyalty to play her part?
    The third Saturday I determined to sound her out. Yet I didn’t know how to begin. I plunged in suddenly, when we were lying in bed after our love, when we were sipping coffee and smoking.
    â€˜Yodi, I have a plan – for both of us. It’s a way I think we can marry and travel and have money. But it needs – awful courage, and – and great loyalty – and patience. No, don’t smile; this is serious. Dead serious. Let me tell you. Don’t interrupt. Just let me tell you. But, right at the start, I want one promise, that’s if you don’t want to do this, if you won’t do my plan, then we’ll drop it and you forget I’ve ever spoken. Promise you’ll forget.’
    She looked at me with her jet-fringed eyes – misty after love the way I liked to see them. ‘I promise Jack. Yes, I pledge that.’ She didn’t say ‘predge’, but the word was half way between the two.
    I said: ‘ Just now,’ and swallowed and stopped; began again. ‘Just now I could steal money from Annerton’s and nobody would know.’
    She lay very still beside me.
    I said: ‘I could’ve done for the last three months but it never entered my head . I’m not – a thief. Not if I could choose I wouldn’t be. But maybe this is the time when I must choose to be. Because the opportunity won’t ever come again. This man, this new man Cassell, he’s all at sea at present. All the time I’m handling big money – pay for the staff every Friday: there’s 400 on the staff – other things. Any week, any week at all , a thousand pounds could drop into my lap, nobody would know.’
    I waited then, drawing breath. A freckle of ash dropped off her cigarette.