The Japanese Girl (2 page)

Of course it wouldn't be true to say I felt this all the time, or even a large part of the time. Most days, most weeks, I hardly thought about it at all. Routine is deadening. And in the end comforting. You still have dreams but you – what's the word? – sublimate them by filling up the pools and watching the telly.

But I came home this night really swimming with excitement. Meeting this girl was the most stimulating thing that had happened to me in a year. Because since I married Hettie, and that was fourteen years ago, I'd hardly looked at another woman seriously. And suddenly out of the blue it was as if I had been stung.

I slept badly. We slept in separate beds which we'd changed to three years ago because Hettie said my restlessness kept her awake. Tonight I was glad because I could toss and turn just as much as I pleased. Half awake and half asleep I went over my brief meeting with the Japanese girl and made up extra conversation that would have convinced her what a charming man I was.

The thing was that I thought from the way she looked at me that she was attracted to me too. It was only in the light of morning when the pale sunlight began to show in nicks through the thin green chintz curtains that I faced up to the fact that I would probably never see her again.

I worked for Annerton's, the big London dock firm. I was assistant cashier, under Mr Armitage (who had just been taken ill). It had looked a fair enough prospect when I joined the firm at 17: reasonable pay with good prospects of promotion. But although I'd moved up I'd not for some reason made the grade with them. Twice I'd been passed over and twice I'd nearly left. But somewhere at bottom in me is a streak of self-distrust – a dislike of anything new and a fear that the new may turn out worse than the old. I'm obstinate, people say, determined and ambitious. But they don't understand the fear I have of the unknown.

And Hettie always discouraged me from trying a new job. She really hadn't any confidence in my initiative, and I suppose, God help her, she was reasonably comfortable in our shared house, knowing her neighbours, not wanting to move.

The following Friday I went to see Mr Head and suggested he might like me to call on Mr Armitage again on the next Saturday. He seemed surprised, because Armitage and I had never got on specially well; but he said all right, if I
felt
like going down perhaps I could take these bank papers for Armitage to approve. I needn't wait for them: Armitage could post them back at his leisure.

I didn't wait for them. I was in and out of Armitage's house in twenty minutes, and then for three hours I moved around in the neighbourhood of the girl's home.

She looked quite startled when she saw me.

‘Oh,' I said, ‘well I said it
might
happen but I never thought it
would
. Haven't you any parcels I can carry this evening?'

She half laughed but didn't look displeased and we stood there a minute or so. I said I had been seeing my sick colleague again and she said she had been to the afternoon showing of a movie and had stayed out for supper.

I said: ‘ Well, it's a bit cold here. Would you like a drink? That looks quite a nice pub.'

She hesitated, and I knew this was the moment of decision. I'd planned this all beforehand, but it all fell to pieces if she said no.

She didn't say no, and that's how it all began.

We began to meet once a week, each Saturday afternoon. Her name was Yodi Okuma. Her parents were both dead. Her father had been a Japanese seaman whose ship had been unloading in Liverpool in 1941 and he had been interned. After the war he had come to London and married a Japanese girl and they had two children, Yodi and Takemoto – or Taki, as she called him – her younger brother. Taki was training to be a teacher at London University; Yodi worked in an upholstery firm in Brighton and with her wages was helping to support her brother through his college days. Taki, she said, was much more Japanese looking than she was, but he loved England and never wanted to leave it. His ambition was to become a tutor of Japanese at Oxford or Cambridge. Yodi on the contrary wanted to travel. She didn't care how soon she could get away from England. She wanted to see Japan and all the world.

This was an immediate bond between us. Her talk of travel lit up all my old ambitions. We went to the pictures three or four times, always to see travel films or movies set against glamorous backgrounds, such as
Hawaii
. We talked and talked, and always found more in common.

And of course it wasn't just talk. Every time we met the attraction grew, and soon I was kissing her goodbye. Then in no time it became a question not of how we could spend the afternoon but where we could spend it. The place she lived in was a hostel for girls, and the rules were still fairly strict.

One day I took a half day off from the office and went to Brighton unknown to her and took a room in a block of flats in Kemptown. It was only a tiny bed-sitter and it cost £5 a week, but it was modern and light and private, right on the top floor. I'd got £300 in the Post Office and Hettie would never know I had drawn it out. Just spending the capital it would go a long way. I didn't see beyond the end of the year.

So I took her to the flat the next Saturday afternoon and we made love. She was quite different from Hettie – I didn't know two women could be so different. She was so impulsively warm, so welcoming, that it made all the difference to me; I felt I was discovering a woman for the first time.

Of course I had told her I was married, and she didn't seem to mind that. She was a submissive little creature in some ways, as if generations of her forebears had left this as a mark on her, a mark of the inferior sex. Yet she had a distinct personality, quite strong, quite wayward, full of warmth and high spirits. She took things lightly, amiably, even ill-health. We hardly spoke of Hettie and she hardly spoke of her life before she met me. We both lived in the present, and we both talked of the future. She seemed to have no special friends among the girls she worked with or those she boarded with. She was devoted to her brother and wrote him every week. I don't know if she had had boy friends, I was only happy that she had none now.

All these weeks I had not, of course, been visiting Mr Armitage. He was still ill, and getting no better, but this news came by letter to the firm; there was no need for his assistant to go down. Him being away made a lot more work for me but I didn't mind because every week was just a preparation for Saturday.

I told Hettie I was still seeing Mr Armitage, but after a bit I thought, she's just not going to swallow this much longer, so I told her one night I was going to the races in Plumpton on the next Saturday. I knew it would shock her because she didn't approve of gambling, so I knew there was no risk of her wanting to come with me. I'd chosen racing partly for that reason and partly because I thought if she ever does find out about the £300, saying I'd lost it at the races was an easy way out.

Because I still hadn't really thought of leaving her.

Well, she was shocked, in her quiet rather listless way; but she also said: ‘How long have you been going?'

‘Going?' I stared at her. ‘Why this is …' and then I sensed that it was better not to say it was the first time. ‘This will be the third Saturday. Before that I went to see Armitage every week – honestly.'

‘I knew there was something different,' she said. ‘There was something different about you. There has been – even for longer than three weeks.'

‘What d'you mean?' I laughed. ‘I don't feel any different.'

‘Well, you are. More excited, like. Excitable. Edgy.'

‘Not bad-tempered. You can't say I've been bad-tempered.'

‘No, no. I wouldn't say that. But edgy. Half the time you don't listen when I talk to you. You don't read the evening paper the way you used to. It's – something I can't describe. Oh, Jack …'

‘Yes?' I was fearful then that she might have guessed.

‘How much are you
betting
on the races? It's the craziest way of losing money. You get nothing for it – nothing at all. You might as well throw it down a drain!'

I laughed again. ‘You can set your mind easy about that! I never put more than ten bob on any race – more often it's five! Honestly, Hettie, since Armitage was taken ill I've been working late nearly every night, you know that. I've been at a stretch. And I find this going off and watching horses, it's a sort of relaxation. You ought to come sometime.'

She shook her head dubiously, as I hoped she would. ‘It's such a
bad
habit. There are such awful people at race meetings. And anyway, even if you only put ten shillings on a race, it might mean you losing three or four pounds in an afternoon.'

‘Oh, really!' I patted her hand, almost in affection, though now she meant nothing, nothing to me. ‘I've never lost more than two pounds yet. And I win sometimes. So far I'm not a pound down on three meetings.'

‘Three meetings,' she said quietly. ‘You told me it had only been two.'

The next day, the next afternoon, Yodi and I went and sat on the beach for an hour or two before we went back to the little room in Kemptown. We talked about beaches. Neither of us had ever been out of England, but these days everybody has a good idea what foreign places look like: the Mediterranean towns, the surfs of Australia and Honolulu, the glimmering domes of Venice, the temples and magnolias of Kyoto, the painted fishes of the Caribbean. We talked about them and wished we could visit them together. She was mad keen to travel – even keener than I was – and as soon as her brother was earning his own keep she meant to get a job, if she could, which would enable her to. Japanese airlines, she thought, might welcome a girl who could speak good English.

But of course at heart that was not the way she wanted to travel, whisked by jets from place to place, boarded at hostels, on a rigorous time-schedule. Nor did I. The essence of travel as I saw it, even if only perhaps for two holidays a year, was leisure to enjoy the places one visited and money to visit them in comfort.

Just then I began to see a tremendous opportunity ahead. Armitage was no better and was not going to get any better. The fiction was still put about but nobody believed in it any more. Armitage had not been appointed head cashier until he was 47. I was only 35. But I was his second man. If he retired – as he must very soon – there was every prospect of me taking his place. That meant nearly double what I was making now – and four weeks' holiday a year, instead of two. If that happened, I thought, I'd have the courage to tell Hettie about Yodi. Whether I left Hettie might depend on her, but I would be able to keep Yodi in a really pleasant little flat somewhere and we could spend all our spare time together and all my holidays. If Hettie would divorce me, so much the better: then I could make a clean break. Also as head cashier at Annerton's I would be in a good position to apply for a still better position somewhere and one that would give me a chance to travel.

I was very excited when I told Yodi all this, and she quickly caught on to the idea. ‘You mean if you could you would marry me, Jack?'

‘Of course! It's the one thing I'd like most in the world. Didn't you know?'

‘Well … Between this and being married – there is a gap. I was not so sure.'

‘Why are you so modest, Yodi, so sort of self-effacing?'

‘If I am, it is the way of Japanese women.'

‘But you've been brought up in the West, brought up in our ways.'

She was silent. ‘When I was small the Japanese were not popular in England. Some of the little girls I went to school with, their fathers had been in the prison camps – So it was not very nice for me. Since I grew up, young men … well, they have not wanted marriage. Perhaps it has given me a sense of inferiority.' ‘I've got to put that to rights,' I said.

All the next two weeks I was on tenterhooks. I heard Armitage had sent in his resignation. I knew the board would be thinking about his successor – probably had been for some time. I worked furiously, wondering when the call would come and if it would come. Rumours of all sorts flew about, but I didn't believe half of them. I knew Armitage hadn't liked me, but I thought my work was good enough. I was ripe for the big move. Because of Yodi I had to have it.

Then one Friday afternoon Mr Head sent for me. I went in, mouth dry, hands hot, but cool in the head, not nervous so that anyone could see, not shaking.

He said: ‘Ah, Jack, sit down. You know of course that Mr Armitage has resigned. Poor chap, I think he's about done for. The result of the latest tests he's had could hardly have been worse.'

I said: ‘ I'm sorry. Of course I knew he was leaving.'

‘Yes, well, there it is, there it is. A good and loyal servant. Naturally the board have been considering his successor.'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I expect they have.'

‘They've interviewed a number of candidates and yesterday they appointed a new man. His name is Cassell, and he comes from Palmer's, the textile combine. I hope you'll get on well with him. He comes with the highest references.'

Hettie, of course, was not surprised and not too upset. ‘After all, dear, you are a bit young, aren't you?'

‘The new man's 39,' I said.

‘Well, he's had a lot of other experience, I expect.'

‘What's other experience to do with it? I know Annerton's business through and through! D'you know, this new fellow will have to lean on me for
months
before he knows whether he's coming or going!
I
‘II have to teach him what
I
know before he can begin to do his job properly! It's just too damned unfair. That bastard Ward! And I expect Armitage had his say!'

‘Don't be so angry, Jack. It'll upset me. What's the use of carrying on? They've made their choice. You – maybe you …'