The cars are ordered for eleven o’clock. As the hour approaches, the girls hang round each other’s necks, grow sentimental, rain kisses on Emile, his cheeks, his hands, his perfect feet. Yuji, the only man there, the only Japanese, waits on his own by the empty fireplace. At a quarter to the hour, Alissa, Emile in her arms, crosses the room and stands in front of him. She smiles. The smile tells him she too believes this is the last time they will see each other. It also tells him that this is a truth neither of them, as a matter of good style, of etiquette, of something else, perhaps, something more, will, even in these last minutes, hint at to each other. He has offered to go to the docks with her. The offer has been declined, firmly. The docks are full of police spies. It would be a quite unnecessary risk. And like her father (whose example she is clearly taking strength from), she does not like goodbyes to be drawn-out affairs.
‘How happy he will be to see you,’ says Yuji.
‘Yes.’
‘And Emile.’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you will like Singapore.’
‘The English are dull,’ she says.
‘Dull?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve only met a few.’
‘Do you think he will learn to speak English there?’
‘Papa?’
‘Emile.’
‘Yes. I suppose he might.’
There’s a movement at the window. ‘Coats on, girls!’ calls Miss Ogilvy. ‘The cars are here.’
‘They’re early,’ says Yuji.
‘And Japanese,’ says Alissa, hurriedly. ‘I’ll see to that. And I’ll tell him everything about you. I’ll make him proud.’
The drivers come in. The smaller of the two turns down the corners of his mouth at the sight of so much luggage.
‘I should help,’ says Yuji.
‘You stay with your family,’ says Miss Ogilvy. And he stays, dumbly watching the bags being carried out, and now and then turning to meet Alissa’s gaze. The timing is very delicate. He can, he thinks, do this for another minute or two. Five at most, no more. The last bag is collected, lashed precariously to the roof of a car.
Miss Ogilvy comes in, buttoning her coat. She looks slowly around the room, takes a large bunch of keys from her pocket. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks. They follow her out. Yuji carries Emile. When Alissa has sat herself in the back of the second car, when she has slid her stick beside her right leg, he leans down, and a little awkwardly, passes her the baby.
14
Forty-eight hours after the ship has sailed Yuji opens his eyes in a room he cannot remember having seen before. To the right, the direction he is facing, daylight seeps through a window of torn paper to show a pair of muslin sitting cushions, an old utility chest, a low table scattered with flasks and cups. He is not alone. From behind him comes the moist, arrhythmic rasp of snoring. He twists in the bedding, squints. A man is lying half a mat away. A large head, a pile of lank hair, an overcoat for a blanket. One arm is visible, one wrist. On the wrist is Yuji’s watch. Yuji shuts his eyes, sleeps again. The next time he wakes there is a woman standing above him, prodding him with her foot.
‘If you want to stay,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to settle your bill first.’
He sits up, rubs his face, looks around.
‘Your friend left an hour ago. Said you’d pay his share.’
He nods. He cannot speak yet. He is longing for some water.
‘Quite a party you had,’ says the woman, seeming, for the moment, to take pity on him. ‘You must be joining up, eh?’
He nods again.
‘You want some tea? I’ll make you tea, but don’t try to run off without paying. People who do that round here end up in the water.’
Round here? Round where?
She leaves, draws the door shut. Yuji, finding he is already fully dressed, shuffles on his knees to the window, forces it wide, and looks out over the smoking, crooked back lanes of China Town. A breeze carries smells of boiling, of frying, of bar latrines. He belches acid, wonders for a moment if he is going to faint.
‘You’ve got it bad,’ says the woman, coming in with his tea. ‘Army life won’t be as hard as all that. Just think how proud your mama will be. And the girls, they don’t look twice at a man unless he’s got a uniform on.’
She puts the bill under his cup. He finds, crumpled in different pockets, the money he needs. She counts it, counts the tip, raises the little plucked crescents of her eyebrows, and bows to him. ‘They’ll probably make you an officer,’ she says. ‘With your nice manners.’
The house is a bar with rooms, a low-grade assignation house. Downstairs, a girl is wiping a dirty cloth over a dirty table. Yuji mutters his goodbyes, trips over a hen at the door, gets out. He hopes he will not meet his ‘friend’ again, the self-professed artist who, at some hour in some bar the previous day (the New Moon? The Red Sleeve?) attached himself to Yuji, listened to his story, and later, presumably to compensate himself for attending so respectfully to the troubles of a drunken stranger, decided to steal Yuji’s watch and hat.
He takes the first train for Tokyo, reads, with hallucinatory attention, a woman’s magazine left behind on the seat (‘Why Mother-in-law Is Always Right’), then spends his last few sen on a tram from Tokyo Central to Hongo. In the vestibule, while he is shaking off his boots, Miyo appears.
‘How fortunate!’ she says, a delighted smile on her face. ‘He only arrived an hour ago. Or two hours. But anyway, he was here when the man with the big car came. I wouldn’t have known what to say. Have you lost your hat?’
He goes past her into the Western room. The screens to the Japanese room are open. Father is in there, kneeling by the alcove, carefully wrapping incense burners in sheets of tissue paper.
‘Ah,’ he says, catching sight of Yuji. ‘Miyo didn’t seem to know when you would be back.’
‘Welcome home,’ says Yuji. ‘Please accept my apologies. I was not expecting you.’
‘I telephoned two nights ago.’
‘You did?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re here now.’
‘Are you well?’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
‘And Mother?’
‘Surprisingly well. The parcel on the table is a gift from her. Cinnamon biscuits. Easter biscuits. A recipe of old Yakumo’s.’
‘Mother has been baking?’
‘I should have taken her long ago. If I had realised how it would benefit her . .’
Yuji looks at the parcel, touches it. He feels as though sake is seeping in a gum from his eyes, that he could, at any instant, become hysterical. He also feels quite calm. He picks up the envelope beside the parcel.
‘A young man in a theatrical uniform delivered it,’ says Father. ‘If you had been here a little sooner, you would have met him.’
‘There was a big car?’
‘Apparently. Miyo saw it.’
‘I think I have met him already.’