The Japanese Girl & Other Stories

  I said: ‘ Tell them you’re a prostitute.’

  She stared at me, eyes wider than they were ever meant to go. Then she laughed. ‘Oh, you are funny!’

  ‘No, I’m serious. I don’t know much about it, but the tales they tell, some of these high-class girls make a fantastic amount, and all in cash.’

  Her eyes clouded. ‘You would have me say that?’

  I patted her arm. ‘I wouldn’t have you be that. But if you were asked – if you were ever in a corner – it would be an explanation, a way out. They couldn’t ever prove different.’

  She was silent quite a while, and I thought maybe I’d offended her. But after a while she went on: ‘Jack, while we are talking like this, do you realize how much you are trusting me?’

  ‘We discussed all that when you agreed to the plan.’

  ‘Yes, but think again. Think now. You are giving this to me – all this money. You have no hold over me – we are not even married. What if I let you go to prison and then betrayed you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t. I just know you wouldn’t.’

  ‘But what if I did, Jack? You said prepare for everything. What if I did?’

  These weeks I had grown up, aged, matured; it was queer: I could feel it myself. At her question I looked deep into the darkness of my own nature. It was as if I’d opened a door that hadn’t ever been opened before.

  I said: ‘Then, Yodi, I think if you betrayed me, if all this went for nothing, then I think I should kill you.’

  She took my hand. ‘But I could disappear, go and live in Tokyo. There there are millions of girls who look like me. If I changed my name – Oh, I know I won’t; but you have to realize the risk, the trust …’

  ‘If I couldn’t find you,’ I said, ‘ then I think I would kill your brother.’

  I felt her shrink as if she had been touched by a hot iron. ‘Jack … you couldn’t – you wouldn’t.’

  I took her hand again: it was very clammy. ‘No, I wouldn’t; I couldn’t. But if you betrayed me in this it would be the end of the world. You wouldn’t – you couldn’t do that.’

  No more was said then; but if that conversation brought a sort of chill between us for the rest of the evening, it also some-how served to cement the pact. Now we quite understood each other.

  The weeks passed and the plan continued to run smoothly. I dreaded a sudden illness which would keep me away from the office for a week or more. So long as I was there to superintend the figures we were perfectly safe. Yodi was due for a week’s holiday from her firm, and I sent her to Switzerland. In that week in two journeys she took out nearly ten thousand pounds.

  Of course this was risky: smuggling currency out of the country is a penal offence, and she would have had a bad time had she been caught. But in the late holiday season the numbers passing through the air terminals are still great, and she was so inconspicuous: small, quiet, pretty, poorly dressed. The only thing that distinguished her was the Japanese name on a British passport; but this apparently only brought a friendly question from the officials.

  I began to breathe more freely now. With £17,000 safely put away, at least the scheme couldn’t totally fail. There was really only one big risk still, and that was the connection between her and me. Hettie might become suspicious and have me followed, 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!’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘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 theory to say you’d wait until you were caught, pay the penalty, go to prison, take the punishment and come out clean. But who likes the prospect of three years in jail? Youth doesn’t last for ever. Three of my best years gone for ever. What you could do with them. Three years without touching Yodi’s soft body, hearing her voice, even reading a letter from her. Sometimes in the night I couldn’t sleep, turning and tossing until even Hettie in the other bed was wakened.

  Yet to run now completely destroyed the scheme. All my life I’ve been a coward, always I’ve been afraid of being pursued – perhaps it’s what happened when I was a kid once and a whole baying pack of older boys came after me racing through the streets. Perhaps it’s just the way I was born. If I ran now I’d perhaps get right away, but should I ever have another moment’s peace? I’d read the story of the Train Robbers. What sort of a life had they had, hounded, tracked down, changing names, places, never at rest? In the end they’d nearly all given themselves up or been caught. If I stuck to the plan and it worked, I paid my penalty and came o
ut free. I met Yodi as if I’d never known her before. I fell in love with her. Where her money came from was nobody’s business.

  I took her face in my hands. ‘Let’s wait,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a chance for another two or three weeks. I’m taking more every week now. If we get up to £35,000 we’ll think again.’

  ‘I do not believe I can stand it,’ she said, beginning to weep. ‘If you leave me, if you go to prison, I shall have all this money! I shall be too terrified!’

  ‘Nobody can touch you,’ I said. ‘So long as no one discovers that we know each other, you’ll be absolutely safe.’

  ‘But all those years I shall lose you. All those years and we can’t even – even write.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Don’t weaken me now, dear. I know how you must feel – but understand how I feel. Just the same.’

  ‘Let us go,’ she said. ‘ Let us make plans to leave early next month.’

  The following week, plunging now, I took three thousand. I knew it couldn’t be long now because of the auditors. It was a question of weeks, perhaps even days. Yet they were all so blind. They didn’t seem to want to find out. I realized I could have taken two thousand a week all the time and nobody would have questioned it. They didn’t deserve to catch me. I should slip away, I could slip away while there was still time.

  The next week I took another three thousand. I began to feel fatalistic about it. Nobody could expect this luck to last. I began to make preparations. Dover to Calais, you were over in an hour. Train to Paris. Hire a car there, drive to Geneva. Leave the car, train to Berne. Whom should I meet in a café but Miss Yodi Okuma who happened to have flown over to Zürich on a holiday. There was £10,000 in Zürich. That would last till the hue and cry died down. We were not Train Robbers. They wouldn’t go on pursuing me endlessly the way they had them.

  So I decided it was my last week. Another three thousand and then I was off. I promised Yodi this. I promised myself this. The Tuesday and the Wednesday went by, and I thought, if I am really going to bolt, why limit myself to £3,000? Why not five? Why not six? So I made plans, and on the Thursday morning when Mr Head called me in for his usual morning chat I had the whole scoop in line. Tomorrow when I left I would carry a bag. This would be the one big scoop.

  But when I went into his office Mr Cassell was there too, and with them were two grave-faced men I knew by sight. They were the auditors.

  So it all happened as planned. First questioned by them, then tackled, then challenged. I finally broke down and confessed what I had done. It was a nasty time, especially when they brought in two of the firm’s directors. But it gave me an opportunity I’d never had before to tell them just what I thought of them, why I’d broken out like this, why I’d defrauded them, why I’d lost thousands of pounds of their money on the races. Because I had been a loyal servant of theirs for eighteen years, had joined them straight from school, had wanted only to work for them and work my way up the firm for the rest of my life. Instead I had been treated as a cog not as a human being, overworked, underpaid and disregarded when any promotion was going. I was expected to work for another twenty-five years and then I’d be retired with a gold watch and a miserly pension and told to enjoy my old age! It was time they woke up, I told them, and realized that the days of slavery were past, and if their treatment of their staff was oppressive and dishonest, they couldn’t expect loyalty and honesty in return.

  I fairly let myself go. I said the same things again when the police arrived. Maybe I overdid it a bit, because it seemed such a good line. God knows it was the truth, and maybe it sounded like the truth. But possibly I overdid it.

  It was all worse than I thought. That’s the trouble with imagination: you can’t trust it. You go to the dentist and think he’s going to torture you and you don’t feel a thing. You go to a doctor for a simple pain somewhere and his examination gives you hell. Well, this was hell.

  They took me away, and the next day I was up before a magistrate and was remanded in custody. Remanded in custody, mark you. It means I was shoved in prison like an old lag in a cell with two other men who’d been caught shop-breaking. It was grim, just that to begin, and I can tell you my heart was in my boots. Because this was the very beginning and I couldn’t see all the time ahead.

  I didn’t want to see Hettie but she came just the same. ‘Oh, Jack, why did you do it? Why? Why? Why? Weren’t we happy together? Did you want for anything? What was wrong?’

  ‘I wanted for everything,’ I said passionately. ‘Everything that makes life worth living!’

  She burst into fresh tears. ‘I told you. Oh, I told you. That racing! All the betting! I can’t believe you lost, wasted so much!’

  This was a point of interest to the police too. One day Inspector Lawrence came to me and said: ‘Look, tell me a bit about this racing. Who did you go with?’

  ‘Nobody. I went on my own.’

  ‘Every week? No pals? You must have had pals.’

  ‘I didn’t. I went on my own. I didn’t need anyone else.’

  ‘And all this money. How much did you lose?’

  ‘The lot. Every penny. Every week.’

  ‘You never won at all?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sometimes! It was great then! Sometimes I nearly got back what I’d lost.’

  ‘And what did you spend it on?’

  ‘Spend it on? I went next week and put it on the horses again.’

  ‘Look,’ said Inspector Lawrence again. ‘I know you’ve lost a lot. But you must have some left. Well, I tell you, if you hand this over it will mitigate your sentence. If you are able to return even five or six thousand pounds. Restitution. That’s what they call it. It might mean a year off your sentence. You’ve been very straightforward about everything else. This would help.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said. ‘If I had it they could have it back. Honest. It isn’t going to be any use to me where I’m going.’

  The Inspector looked at me. ‘Too true,’ he said.

  The trial didn’t last very long. After all, I admitted everything so they had nothing to prove. The judge gave me seven years.

  I couldn’t believe it at first. That thin old crow with the haggard face and the dirty grey wig. I’d thought when he was addressing me he sounded pretty harsh, but I thought that was part of the drill.

  Something I’d said to the police about getting back at Annerton’s for treating me like a cypher, that somehow rubbed him up wrong. I suppose judges have to think about society. I suppose he thought if I don’t make an example of this chap, every little downtrodden clerk will think he’s entitled to pinch the week’s takings.

  But seven years. It hit me like a blow in the face and I nearly fainted before they took me down below. I know they fetched a doctor to me so I must have looked pretty sick.

  ‘Never mind,’ said one of the warders grimly, trying to comfort me. ‘ It’s only five really – that’s if you behave yourself.’

  I’ve said about imagination not matching up. Well, it didn’t match up. I say to all those people who think of taking a risk, well don’t. And all this talk about improving prisons. All I can say is if the prison I was in was an improved one, then God help it before.

  The humiliation, the degradation, maybe you expect that too, but it takes a greater grip on you than you ever thought, making you feel like something that crawls and isn’t even fit again to see the light. I regretted then, God, how I regretted not having made a run for it while there was still time! Now I should be sunning myself on the Copacabana Beach in Rio instead of shut in four narrow walls with a bucket seat for a lavatory in the corner and a tiny window with six bars. And with Yodi. With Yodi! Yodi I would see no more for five long years. Yodi with the sloe eyes and the casual, easy smile, the dark glinty hair and the welcoming arms.

  Because of course it had to be a part of our scheme that she should never come to see me. Never, whatever the emergency. And I could never write to her. Never. We had arranged it that once every three months she wo
uld send me a copy of Sporting Life, for the first day of the month she sent it. This would show that she was keeping to our plan and waiting for me and that all was well. I’d specially forbidden her even to enclose a message or try to underline a passage in it. And I’d told her always to post it from London, never from Brighton.

  I was absolutely determined that we should be safe.

  It drove me mad that the wrong woman could visit me at regular intervals. This was the first snag. Hettie’s religion made her react the wrong way, and she said stoutly she was going to stick by me whatever the cost to herself, and meet me when I came out. She gave up our place and went to live with her parents. At first I tried to be gentle with her, acting the remorseful husband and saying that she must divorce me for her own sake: she was pretty, I said, and still young; she could marry again; my life was finished, I said; when I came out I’d be no use – no one would ever offer me a decent job again, I could never support a wife; for her own sake she must leave me and forget me.

  She would have none of it. Sometimes I thought she actually enjoyed her nobility; she saw herself in the role; the disgrace, the near-poverty might kill her, but never should she be said to lack loyalty to her unhappy husband. I wrote to her father, telling him what I thought. Her father wrote back telling me what he thought, and it didn’t make polite reading. But his views didn’t sway her.

  After six months in London they took me up to the midlands and there I stayed for two years. At the beginning I used to do what I told Yodi I’d do, which was go over in my mind every night one of the six wonderful holidays we’d planned down to the last detail. It worked for a while and I used to go to sleep lulled by a sense of anticipation, with sensuous thoughts of marriage to her and travel in the most beautiful lands in the world. And if it had been only three years to wait the plan might have lasted longer. But by the time nine months had gone by, with an absolute minimum of another fifty months ahead before I could hope to begin the first journey, the anodyne was wearing thin. Then often I would lie sleepless for hours on end wondering what I had done to myself. When I got out I would be forty. I wasn’t quite thirty-six yet. To middle aged people forty is quite young; to someone still only thirty-five it looks like the beginning of old age.