The Painted Cage Read Free Page B

He’s unsuitable in every way. And what about his age?’ His voice was unsteady, he cleared his throat. He spoke to her stony face. Nothing seemed to change her.
    â€˜Would you have me marry someone I did not love, Papa?’ She tossed her head to incite him.
    â€˜Bah!’ Mr Sidley exploded and took a step forward in rage. ‘Go to your room until I say you can leave.’
    â€˜I shall marry only Mr Redmore,’ she repeated as she closed the door.
    Some part of herself felt sorry for her parents. Reggie was a man without background, without money and fifteen years older than herself. An adventurer, her fatherfumed, whose life was tied to lands whose preposterous names their mouths could barely shape, whose heaving seas and pagan saints, whose naked populations of dust and sweat and dirt were good only for a shudder or a story, for a painted vase or a bale of silk. And yet, in one unthinkable stroke, that whole unknown universe rose up in insolence to threaten them. But nothing could dissuade her, something corroded her that consumed all need for obedience.
    Upstairs she grew calm. She refused to eat or speak, lying in bed with her face to the wall as if sick in the last prostrations. She lost weight and grew frail in a couple of days. Determination added fierceness to her.
    â€˜There must be another way to make her change her mind,’ Mrs Sidley sobbed until her husband strode into her daughter’s room and ordered her to eat.
    â€˜I’ve been to see Jenkins. Redmore will be gone by tomorrow if he knows what’s good for him.’ Mr Sidley shouted. Amy started up in shock.
    She breathed fire, she breathed soul, and when her father was gone she composed herself for death. The letters she left swam in easy, flowery words from her without the anguish of a backbone. Before a coming storm she set off that night to the lake near their home, harnessing the drama of the elements conveniently to her own. She made sure they heard her leave. Their voices pursued her and she was dragged from the water no sooner than she had calculated.
    â€˜The minx,’ she heard her father say. ‘If it has come to this we are left with no choice. But I’ll be damned if I help that bounder feather his nest at the expense of Amy. He’ll not get what he expects in the way of a settlement from me. I must look to her protection.’ She opened her eyes. It seemed only right they should know she lived, now she had her way. Throughout the drama, Reggie stood back in watchful silence, content to see the machinery he had started work its way to a final order. An order of his making, to his best advantage.
    She remembered their wedding as she would a funeral; long faces and some sobs. Except for herself, the gaietyhad the brittleness of thin icing on a cake. They married with haste, for Reggie, recovered from whatever had been wrong with him, had received a new posting. He had been promoted to Acting Resident in a small town up country on the Malay coast in the state of Sungei Ujong. It took her some time to get her tongue around the name, to enunciate it properly.
    *
    Reality was stranger than the imagining of exotic lands. Exotic, Amy found, was a word to be used only in ignorance or retrospect. There was nothing exotic in tropical living. Each day was a battle with a weariness that seemed to soak deeper and deeper, making pap of body and mind. Sungei Ujong was hot and silent with the intensity of cunning. The dull red soil of Somerset, the cool hills and hedgerows of hawthorn soon became a constant mirage filling her mind.
    They disembarked from the ship at Singapore, but did not stay long in the town. From the first moment her senses reeled at the kaleidoscope of colours, the perennial sunblaze and bright-winged birds. When she left the bustling city with its shops and botanical gardens, with its balls and social events, its neat villas and spreading lawns, she did not realize she left the last