The Japanese Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

or someone in the firm might notice the discrepancies and not tell me but they’d set detectives on me without me knowing.
    But Hettie wasn’t the type. She probably didn’t think I had it in me to take up with another woman, and even if she suspected she wouldn’t ever go about it that way. And as for the firm, there was really only the two clerks and I kept them always in their place. As for Cassell, he was a non-starter.
    Mind, as the money went on building up, the tension grew. All the time, quietly, like an iron band it tightened. After a couple of short flaming rows which showed the strain between us, Yodi adopted the plan of bringing with her every week a bunch of travel books and brochures. Then, if we met in the flat, after making love we made plans, if not in the flat we sat in her car in some by-way or dropped in at a pub and looked over the brochures together.
    When I came out I’d be thirty-eight or thirty-nine; and it was going to be a long wait, three to four years. So it would be a help while I was in to be able to dwell on the exact plans we had as soon as we met again.
    The first plan, when we got married, was to go on a honeymoon to the South of France. We’d buy a little car and drive along stopping at whatever beach took our fancy and stay just as long as we liked and then move on again. After that we’d go into Italy, to Pisa, to Florence and then across to Venice. There we would park our little car and stay in Venice exploring all its beauty and having gondola rides until we wanted to move on again. So we would take a boat down the Jugoslav coast of the Adriatic, stopping off wherever we fancied and so slowly reach Greece. Here we would explore Athens and Mycenae and Delphi and presently take the train on to Istanbul. We had read up all about the covered markets and sailing up the Bosphorous and the great beautiful unused Mosques. And so we would stay there until the last of the summer faded. Then we would fly back to Venice and from there drive slowly home.
    This was our first itinerary. The very first. The second, undertaken the second year, would be to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Japan …
    This planning helped a lot. It gave us an escape. It justified what we were doing. It made the future real – this life at present was just a preparation.
    Hettie was ailing when Christmas came: the chills of November brought on a bronchial catarrh, and she asked me to stay home Saturdays to keep her company. I said I was sorry I couldn’t. She said it was crazy: how much money had I lost up to now? I said I hadn’t lost, I’d made a profit. She said surely there can’t be racing in this weather. I said I was going to point-to-point; they were just as exciting to me.
    At Christmas I had to stay at home because she took to her bed for a few days – that is, I missed one Saturday. Sitting by the fire that evening I thought: where shall I be next Christmas? Not as comfortable and warm as this. Cold and lonely and locked up. And the Christmas after and the Christmas after. But the next. The next one we could spend in the Bahamas …
    When I met her on the Saturday following Yodi wanted to break our plan. ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it; I can’t stand it any more! This waiting; this feeling as if an axe is going to fall! I can’t bear it! Let’s go!’
    â€˜Go?’
    â€˜Yes, go. What have we got now? We had £26,000 before this week. Now this week you bring £1,500. That means £27,500. It is enough. Why wait for this terrible blow to fall? Could we not be lost in South America? There are all mixtures of races there. A Japanese would be nothing unusual, neither would an Englishman. In three or four years anything could happen. It is too long ! There could be another war by then. We could escape somewhere now and be happy!’
    The same thoughts had not been absent from my mind. It was well to plan, all right in