The Painted Cage Read Free

filled her with strange feelings. It was as if something dark and naked in her opened and unfolded. She did know then that this was not love. What uncoiled within her was a taste that could never be lost. She returned Reggie’s gaze, she danced with him again.Beneath the beating of her heart, deliberate as her stare, that sinuous opening within her grew ever wider, ever deeper, ever darker. What lay exposed between them then was like contamination. The dissipation she sensed in Reggie was like the sweet, rotting scent of some carnivorous flower that draws in and consumes its prey. He recognized her at a glance within that crowded room. He showed her to herself.
    She woke at night or never slept. Outside, the wind-swept trees seemed as feverish as herself. From the beginning, without words something seemed established between them. Sarah was not approving, Reggie’s age to her mind could not be overcome.
    â€˜You’re mad, quite mad,’ she admonished. ‘How can you be in love with him?’ She shook her head to lose the thought.
    â€˜Well I am, that’s all, ‘Amy answered, but could find no other words to explain her strange obsession. She sat before a looking-glass and smoothed back thick coils of hair. The sun in a shaft enclosed her as if mesmerized by her will. Sarah looked at her in awe, her commonsense almost shameful before the daring Amy showed. She entered with reluctance into the conspiracy Amy demanded so as to stay within a close orbit of Reggie. She engineered occasions, verified excuses and sometimes told outright lies. The Sidleys were innocent of their daughter’s purpose or the sly light in Reggie’s eye.
    â€˜You’re inviting trouble, nothing more,’ Sarah said after a tennis match in which Amy and Reggie Redmore had beaten Sarah and a visitor. The court filled up with another quartet, Sarah and Amy poured lemonade into glasses for spectators.
    â€˜Don’t be so silly,’ Amy scolded, turning her back on Sarah.
    â€˜Are you sure Mr Redmore is in love with you ?’ Sarah inquired. ‘Has he said anything yet?’
    â€˜No, but he will,’ Amy decided, her smile untouchable.
    Soon Sarah saw them, apart from the crowd yet near enough for decorum, sipping at glasses of chilled lemonade, Amy graceful in white muslin. There wassomething Sarah could not describe that made her immediately recoil from Mr Redmore. She could not understand why Amy had lost her head to such an unsuitable man.
    â€˜Its some time since I played a game of tennis,’ Reggie said. ‘I have to admit you’ve exhausted me.’ He laughed, his eyes suggestive of experiences private to themselves. There was nothing he said or did that overstepped propriety in an open way.
    Amy smiled and then, as no one was near to hear her audacity, she asked, ‘Have you seen the mynah birds in the summerhouse?’
    They walked the few steps to the summerhouse, still in view of people. There were ways to find themselves alone even within a crowd. There had been an afternoon of boating upon the lake in which they found themselves together, lost upon an island. There were woods in which the search for berries divided people easily. But throughout their courtship they barely touched. Reggie behaved as a gentleman, his control persuasive and commanding. He knew what he wanted, he manipulated Amy to a situation for his own advantage.
    There was the musty smell of earth and old wood in the summerhouse and the odour of the birds, their feathers black and glossy, stalking their perches restlessly within an enormous cage. A wall of shuttered windows gave a sudden privacy. Amy walked up to the cage and cooed to the birds. They looked at her silently from grim little eyes.
    â€˜They’re being perverse, they won’t talk.’ She turned to face Reggie, who seemed to fill the delicate structure with his tall, muscular frame.
    â€˜I’d rather talk with you,’ he