The Japanese Girl & Other Stories, Page 2

  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 …’

  ‘Well, go on: what were you going to say?’

  ‘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?’

  ‘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.

  ‘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. ‘ But somebody would find out, Jack, sooner or later they’d–’

  ‘Wait. I’m coming to that. A thousand pounds any week, every week, for the next three or four months. Get me? We could make away with probably twenty thousand. Perhaps even more.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes, we.’

  ‘How do I …’

  ‘Listen, Yodi. Sooner or later I’ll get caught. That’s for certain. They’ll want to know what I’ve done with the money. A lucky thing, just by chance, when Hettie wanted to know where I was going every Saturday I said I was going to the races. There was a reason for that, but now it fits in. I shall say I lost the money on the races. But all the time you’ll have it.’

  She sat up. ‘ Oh, Jack, this is not serious –’

  ‘It is. It’s a proposition. No one can prove I didn’t gamble the money away. No one knows about you and me. People round here will recognize you because you’re Japanese; but not me, I’m just anybody – a man. There’s nothing to connect us. You said you never told anybody my name …’

  ‘Of course not! I didn’t wish to get you into trouble with your wife.’

  ‘So.’ Even while I spoke the proposition seemed to solidify. ‘So the money will come to you. You will bank it. There’s nothing to stop you opening half a dozen bank accounts. Banks never object to money being paid in. It’s not their concern where it came from so long as their customer has respectable references. They only worry if you want an overdraft. So in a few months you could have £20,000 in your name, untouchable, safe. So long as no one knows about us, no one could ever query it.’

  She was sitting up, holding the sheet to her throat. ‘But, Jack, what good would that be to you? If they caught you, you would go to prison!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know. That’s what I’ve got to face. It’s the only way we could make this scheme work.’

  ‘But – but if we really did this – and it makes me tremble just the thought of it – if we did it, why couldn’t we stop when you thought you were going to be found out – stop in time and then – then we’d leave the country together – go to South America, or even Japan!’

  ‘Would you want to marry a wanted criminal?’ I asked. ‘And be a wanted criminal yourself? You would be, you know, then. And as for me, maybe I’m funny. It’d give me a real kick to steal this money – it really would, from Annerton’s – I’d enjoy it. But I couldn’t – couldn’t – enjoy spending the money feeling every minute a policeman’s hand might come on my shoulder. There isn’t any peace of mind that way, I’d feel like a hunted rat!’

  ‘But if you went to prison, how could you enjoy it? I don’t understand –’

  ‘Listen, Yodi. It would be my first offence. My lawyer would make a lot of me being tempted to gamble and being deeply sorry, etc., etc. I might get three years. I might get four. With good behaviour I shouldn’t have to serve more than three at the outside. My wife’ll be shocked to death. She’s religious. Pretty certainly she’ll be persuaded by her father and mother to divorce me. In three years I come out. I get some job found for me by the Prisoners’ Aid or whatever they’re called. I hold it down for three months, then I turn it in, take a job in Brighton, happen to meet you. We fall in love and get married. Presently we leave England. I’ve got a clean sheet, I’ve paid for my crime. We go to live somewhere else – France or Canada or Japan. Presently we begin to live a little better. Once we’re out of England nobody will ever check. Then we travel as we want to travel, live as we want to live. Maybe it won’t last us all our lives, but we’ll have a wonderful time on it travelling everywhere we want – together.’

  There was a long silence beside me. I couldn’t hear her breathing but I could feel it Slow take in, then a tremulous give out. A clock struck, and I knew I should be going.

  ‘Well?’ I said at last.

  She took my hand. ‘Give me time, please. I have to think of this thing. Give me time.’

  TWO

  So we began to plan. It looked easy, but there were twenty ways of slipping up and I had to guard against them all.

  Getting the money wasn’t any trouble. When you have a pay-roll of four hundred. I didn’t make up the pay envelopes, two clerks did that; but I made out the cheque for drawing the money, and nobody ever queried it. Nobody would ever query it until the audit at Christmas, which was five months off. Even then, accountancy firms being rushed off their feet, it would be at least another month after that before they tackled the accounts. I wasn’t at all afraid of Cassell. He never concerned himself with the day-to-day working of the firm; he was dealing with jobs like the financing of development plans, the costing of new products. And there were other ways I could get money apart from the wages cheque.

  But because it was easy I went along with infinite care. To be caught later on might not matter; to be caught at the beginning would ruin everything.

  And getting the money was only the beginning. There must be no connection, no hint of a connection between me and Yodi. If there was we were done for – and she would be in trouble as well as me. The likelihood of me being recognized in the flat in Kempton was infinitely tiny; small-time embezzlers don’t get their photos in the papers; those days are over; but I took to wearing dark clip-ons over my ordinary lenses, and I only went to the flat now and again. Every week from the week she agreed, instead of coming straight to meet her I went a race meeting. Sometimes it was Brighton, sometimes Plumpton or Lingfield. After I got there I put five or ten pounds on the first two races, stuffed the slip
s in my pockets, and after the horses had lost – as they usually did – I left and met Yodi by arrangement somewhere and handed her the money. I didn’t buy a car myself but I bought her a second hand Morris 1000 so that she could get about in it to meet me. Sometimes I went farther afield when there was no racing in Sussex or Kent, and then I would not see her but would keep the money till the following week. At home I ordered the racing papers and kept them upstairs, marking them heavily in blue pencil as if I’d been studying form. Hettie complained about them cluttering up the bedroom, but I took no notice and one day when I found she’d burned some I made such a row that she burst into tears.

  I was building up the picture, and every suit I had carried a pocket half full of old betting slips.

  Passing the money to Yodi was no problem; a thousand pounds in fivers and tenners will easily go in a big envelope; but she did seem unnecessarily scared about opening so many bank accounts and she seemed to feel the money was safer from prying eyes in a suitcase under the bed. In the end she opened five accounts: two in Brighton in different banks, one in Hove, one in Worthing, one in Eastbourne. They were all under her own name. I didn’t want any irregularity to exist, so that anyone could get at her. After all there’s no law against having money. Banks love you if you have money. So does almost everybody, I’ve found.

  But even with five accounts it’s a bit much to pay in £200 in cash every week. Even with five accounts the suitcases under the bed began to get full. Where money was concerned she was sharp and yet she was timid. She latched on quickly enough to all my ideas and followed them to the letter; but she was terrified of paying the money into the banks, of opening a deposit account so that the money could earn interest, of chatting naturally to the bank cashier and perhaps asking his advice.

  One evening when we had been able to go back to the flat and make love she said: ‘ Supposing – you say we have to make plans for everything – supposing I was asked where all this money came from – nothing to do with you, but somebody said: ‘‘Miss Okuma, please tell me where all this cash comes from. I demand to know.’’ ’